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THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


AN  INTERPRETATION  OF 
THE  DECALOGUE 


BY 

WILFORD  L.  HOOPES 

A  Priest  of  the  Episcopal  Church 


i  } » 1 1  *  *    *  '  » 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,   FRENCH  &  COMPANY 

1911 


V. 


1  >   V 


•r,Z     ,    '*    *•• 


Copyright,   1910 
Sherman,  French  &  Company 


THIS    PIECE    OF    WORK 

IS    INSCRIBED 

REVERENTLY    AND    GRATEFULLY 

TO    MY    FATHER 


CONTENTS 

PART   I 

THE    CHARACTER    OF    LAWS    THAT 
GOVERN  THE  SPIRIT    . 

PART   II 


Page 


THE   CODE 

11 

The  First  Law  . 

.       13 

The  Second  Law 

.       25 

The  Third  Law 

.       33 

The  Fourth  Law 

.       45 

The  Fifth  Law  . 

.       57 

The  Sixth  Law  . 

.       71 

The  Seventh  Law 

85 

The  Eighth  Law 

97 

The  Ninth  Law 

.     113 

The  Tenth  Law 

.     125 

PART   III 

SUMMARY   OF   THE   CODE            .          .      137 

ADDENDA      . 

149 

PART  I 

THE     CHARACTER    OF    LAWS    THAT 
GOVERN  THE  SPIRIT 


THE    CHARACTER    OF    LAWS     THAT 
GOVERN  THE  SPIRIT 

The  laws  of  spiritual  living  are,  tradition- 
ally, the  Ten  Commandments.  Those  almost 
prehistoric  words  have  flourished  long  not  so 
much  because  of  an  obvious  as  because  of  a 
hidden  meaning.  That  they  purport  and  al- 
ways have  purported  to  be  the  laws  of  the 
soul's  health  is,  also,  a  reason  for  their  survi- 
val. And  the  fact  of  their  survival  shows  how 
practical  is  men's  perception  that  the  life  of 
their  spirit,  like  the  life  of  any  thing,  can 
thrive  only  under  the  sway  of  certain  ascer- 
tainable laws. 

To-day  the  word  Commandment,  when  used 
in  the  biological  sense  in  which  religion  speaks, 
is  less  intelligible  than  the  word  law.  The  tra- 
ditional word  suggests  a  picture  with  which 
we  have  small  sympathy.  The  quieter,  non- 
vocal,  the  laboratory  revelation  suits  us  better 
than  the  dramatic,  military  one.  It  is,  of 
course,  a  matter  of  mental  habit.  A  hundred 
years  more  and  we  may  prefer  to  think  of  all 
laws  as  commands.  A  little  more  militarism ;  a 
little  more  influence  of  such  things  as  wireless 
telegraphy  where  secondary  causes  are  much 
concealed, — might  change  our  mental  habit. 
But  to-day  our  habit  is  to  emphasize  the  inher- 
ence of  law.     Therefore  it  is  acceptable  to  us 

1 


2  THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

to  account  the  laws  of  our  spirit,  the  laws  gov- 
erning the  development  of  manhood,  as  kin- 
dred to  any  other  set  of  laws  and  to  be  known 
not  by  a  peculiar  name  but  by  the  common 
name,  law.  The  laws  governing  a  tree  bear  the 
same  relation  to  the  tree  as  the  laws  governing 
the  spirit  of  a  man  bear  to  the  man's  spirit. 
The  common  name  helps  us  to  understand  the 
function  of  the  laws  of  the  spirit.  It  helps  us 
know,  also,  why  the  familiar  Ten  Laws  have 
flourished  so  long: — ^they  are  rediscovered  by 
even  humble  people  in  the  laboratory  of  usual 
experience.  Their  revelation  is  biological  and 
continual.  In  the  interest  of  fairer  understand- 
ing we  may  use  the  name  most  suited  to  us  to- 
day. 

At  the  first  considering,  it  is  easy  to  sympa- 
thize with  those  who  chafe  at  the  use  by  the 
Christian  Church  of  the  ancient,  the  Mosaic 
statement  of  the  laws  of  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
It  may  be  admitted  that  the  Church  has  over- 
done that  use.  She  does  seem  to  cling  too  tena- 
ciously to  phrases  which  to  herself  are  famil- 
iar. She  seems  too  easily  content  with  her  own 
probable  comprehension  of  her  own  meanings. 
She  seems  wanting  in  a  sympathetic  willingness 
to  speak  in  simple  and  ever  changing  language. 
And  because  this  is  believed  to  be  so,  many 
serious  men  and  women  have  not  only  derided 
the  Church's  use  of  the  Mosaic  statement  but 
have  missed  the  meanings  of  the    laws    them- 


LAWS  OF  THE  SPIRIT  3 

selves.  What,  they  ask,  is  the  value  to  a  man's 
spirit  in  the  First  Commandment?  It  seems  a 
mere  protest  against  the  abstract  idea  called 
Polytheism.  What  value  to  a  man's  spirit  is 
there  in  the  second  law?  It  seems  a  belated 
outcry  against  an  almost  prehistoric  religious 
custom,  or,  maybe  only  a  mere  growl  at  art. 
The  third  law  seems  to  express  a  feeble  fear  of 
expletives.  The  fourth  appears  to  be  a  blunder- 
ing definition  of  holiness  as  idleness  on  Satur- 
days. Who  needs  to  be  told,  they  ask  further, 
to  honor  his  parents  if  they  are  honorable  peo- 
ple? Who  needs  to  be  told  not  to  cut  a  throat 
or  a  purse?  They  do  not  believe  that  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  physical  integrity  of  marriage 
is  a  high  standard  of  excellence.  As  for  gos- 
siping, for  mistaken  or  falsely  tinctured  com- 
ment, that  is  too  vulgar  to  need  notice.  And 
as  for  coveting, — that  seems  on  the  whole  to  be 
a  pretty  good  thing.  Of  course,  if  these  popu- 
lar meanings  be  exhaustive  there  is  only  most 
elementary  value  in  these  laws,  and  the  Church's 
use  is  to  be  deplored.  Such  meanings  with 
such  use,  indeed,  insult  serious  and  intelligent 
men  and  women.  For  they  belittle  life.  They 
reduce  virtue  to  the  good  behavior  of  the  nur- 
sery. It  is  easy  to  sympathize  with  those  who 
chafe  under  such  interpretations  and  such  a 
notion  of  the  Church's  use  of  the  code  of  the 
spirit. 

A  second  consideration  shows,  however,  that 


4  THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

such  chafing  is  to  a  large  degree  wilful.  To  ex- 
tract from  a  serious  endeavor  a  petty  result 
and  say  "This  is  the  thing  intended,"  is  or 
ought  to  be,  to  discredit  a  critic  in  his  own  es- 
teem of  himself.  For  however  much  the  Church 
may  fail  to  give  precise,  intelligible,  contempo- 
raneous meanings  to  laws  which  she  pronounces, 
yet  she  declares  habitually  that  all  her  utter- 
ance is  to  be  received  under  the  terms  of  the 
personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  For  instance, 
these  laws,  although  they  come  to  us  from  days 
earlier  than  the  days  of  Jesus,  are  to  be  inter- 
preted in  terms  of  his  personality.  What  a 
man  may  think  that  a  Church-given  idea  brings 
him,  he  has  no  right  to  receive  except  as  illum- 
ined within  his  own  judgment  by  the  light  of 
Jesus  Christ.  The  receiver  of  the  Church's 
messages  has,  as  the  Church  has,  the  light  of 
Christ.  And  he  has  also,  as  has  the  Church, 
the  duty,  the  responsibility  of  using  the  light. 
Therefore  it  is,  that  he  who  misses  the  laws  of 
life  which  are  given  in  the  ancient  phrases  of 
the  Ten  Commandments,  is  suffering  to  a  large 
degree  from  a  fault  of  his  own.  The  Church 
may  be  blamable  in  her  conservative  immobility 
of  speech.  But  whoever  throbs  with  desire  for 
life  but  fumes  at  the  Church's  statements  of 
life's  laws,  has  neglected  the  light,  the  Christ 
light,  which  tries  to  lighten  a  man  as  soon  as 
he  is  bom  into  the  world.  From  the  stand- 
point of  human  need,  the    critics    of  Christ's 


LAWS  OF  THE  SPIRIT  5 

Church  often  increase  the  trouble  by  missing 
the  real  point.  The  real  point  is  that  men  and 
women  generally,  including  those  who  compose 
the  Church,  do  not  make  enough  use  of  the 
light  of  Christ.  If  we  used  the  light  of  Christ 
then  we  should  demand  of  the  Church  not 
merely  a  different  life  but  more  life  and  better. 

Now  of  the  laws  which  govern  and  direct 
man's  spirit  there  are  at  least  three  character- 
istics which  are  general  and  self-provable.  A 
law  of  the  spirit  must  rest  upon  a  fact  in  na- 
ture ;  it  must  be  positive ;  and  it  must  be  moral. 
Naturalness,  assertion,  morality  are  three  gen- 
eral and  self-provable  attributes  of  spiritual 
law.  No  training  of  man's  spirit  can  result 
apart  from  recognition  that  the  business  is  a 
piece  of  moral  work ;  work,  that  is,  upon  a  crea- 
ture whose  task  is  to  manage  himself  in  compli- 
cated association  with  both  others  like  himself 
and  One,  in  fact  or  in  idea,  like  but  superior 
to  himself,  God.  Nor  can  training  of  the  spirit 
be  carried  far,  apart  from  recognition  that 
man's  spiritual  capabilities  rest  upon  a  consti- 
tution with  which  man  has  been  endowed  by  the 
Creator  and  which,  like  the  body's  constitution, 
requires  positive  exercise  and  use.  When  these 
characteristics  of  laws  governing  the  spirit  are 
taken  one  by  one  they  become  more  nearly  self- 
evident. 

Taking  the  moral  characteristic  first,  the 
assertion  is  that  a  law    which    governs    man's 


6  THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

spirit  must  be  moral.  For  the  peculiarity  of 
man  is  that  he  is  moral;  that  is,  man's  good  is 
a  matter  of  association  and  of  comparative 
values.  Man  is  subject  to  many  laws  which 
affect  as  well  the  non-human  part  of  the  world, 
such  as  the  law  of  gravitation.  But  any  law 
which  is  concerned  with  men  as  distinct  from 
the  non-human  parts  of  the  world,  must  deal 
with  men  as  moral  beings.  Human  develop- 
ment, human  life  and  spiritual  fortunes,  mean 
moral  attainment.  And  the  law  which  governs 
this  sort  of  life  is  therefore  moral  law.  For  in- 
stance, the  Second  Commandment  which  talks 
much  of  idols  or  images  is  not  concerned  with 
blocks  and  stones.  It  is  concerned  with  the  use 
and  the  users  of  stones  and  blocks.  Images 
and  idols,  indeed,  are  not  stones  and  blocks ; 
they  are  stones  and  blocks  plus  use.  And  the 
law  is  directed  upon  the  use,  the  human  ingre- 
dient in  the  block,  and  the  user.  Or,  the  eighth 
law,  "Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  if  it  be  a  law  of 
man's  spirit,  cannot  be  concerned  with  the  ma- 
terial element  in  property  but  with  the  personal 
element.  Property  means  material  plus  own- 
ership. A  law  governing  the  spirit  of  a  man 
and  having  to  do  with  property  is,  therefore, 
addressed  to  man  as  an  owner.  It  is  the  moral 
quality  which  is,  obviously,  the  key  to  the 
meaning  of  any  law  which  has  jurisdiction  over 
the  spirit  of  a  man. 

Secondly,  a  law  of  man's  spirit  must  be  posi- 


LAWS  OF  THE  SPIRIT  T 

tive,  rather  than  negative.  Man  is  free;  his 
nature  has  been  given  him;  his  manhood  is  in 
his  own  hands;  nothing  is  forbidden;  his  need 
is  to  know  what  he  must  do.  Nothing  is  forbid- 
den. There  are  limits  and  qualifications  to  the 
impulses  of  the  spirit,  but  not  a  single,  possible 
action  stands  prohibited  as  such.  Indeed  noth- 
ing is  unqualified  and  nothing  is  forbidden. 
Killing,  for  example,  is  not  forbidden.  Mur- 
der, however,  a  limitation  upon  the  spirit  of 
the  killer,  is  forbidden.  Drinking  liquors 
or  laudanum,  taking  morphine,  sexual  inter- 
course, are  not  forbidden.  Drunkenness,  sen- 
suality, prostitution,  are  adulterations  of  the 
spirit,  and  as  such  are  qualifications  laid  upon 
the  free  and  pure  actions  of  men.  It  is,  of 
course,  in  order  to  develop  freedom  and  purity 
of  spirit  that  spiritual  law  operates.  It  is  a 
positive  injunction  to  develop  the  spirit  which 
spiritual  law  must  be  assumed  to  convey.  The 
negative  form  of  the  Decalogue,  therefore,  is  a 
feature  which  an  intelligent  person  is  bound  to 
transcend  and  disregard.  Indeed  he  is  under 
intellectual  responsibility  to  understand  the 
positive  and  directive  revelation  contained 
within  the  imperfect,  negative  utterances  of 
these  laws  and  to  perceive  that,  in  their  positive 
meanings,  they  satisfy  the  need  of  the  spirit 
to  know  not  what  cannot  but  what  can  be  done. 
/  To  get  the  meaning  of  the  law  which  Christ 
{  revered,  comprehended,  and  obeyed,  is  to  per- 


8  THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

ceive  that  it  illuminates  vistas  of  positive  pos4 
sibility.  .,«*««*^ 

The  third  feature  of  a  spiritual  law  is  natu- 
ralness. That  is,  a  spiritual  law  must  rest 
upon  a  fact  of  Nature.  It  is  necessary  here  to 
use  the  word  Nature.  No  other  word  ought  to 
do  or  will  do.  To  serious  people  Nature  means 
"The  thing  that  God  created."  Now  what  God 
creates  is  a  real  thing,  a  centre  of  action  and 
influence,  an  object  capable  of  giving  and  re- 
ceiving. And  this  is  true  of  our  spirit  just  as 
it  is  true  of  our  eyes,  our  lungs,  or  of  the  trees 
of  the  field.  Our  spirit  is  not  a  zero  hidden 
mysteriously  in  our  bodies  and  suddenly,  by  a 
process  of  arm  and  leg  or  lung  and  eye  work- 
ing, developed  from  zero  to  something.  Our 
spirit  starts  as  something, — ^just  as  our  bodies 
do.  Our  bodies  have  eyes,  ears,  a  mouth,  arms, 
legs,  and  a  number  of  other  instruments  imply- 
ing capability  and  promise.  Our  spirit  also, — 
by  nature,  by  the  fact  of  its  creation,  because 
when  God  made  our  spirit  he  made  something 
real  from  which  a  developing  life  could  start, — 
our  spirit  is  possessed  of  capability,  of  func- 
tion, of  instrumentality,  by  means  of  which  the 
life  open  to  a  man  or  woman  is  a  life  of  defin- 
able scope  and  experience.  In  short,  our  spirit 
,  has  a  constitution.  It  has  a  universal,  a  human 
f  analysis.  Its  elements  are  discoverable.  And 
upon  those  elements  the  laws  of  the  spirit  rest. 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  human  spirit?  What 


LAWS  OF  THE  SPIRIT  9 

is  this  thing  whose  development  measures  man's 
real  life?  That  is  not  an  artificial,  an  acad- 
emic question.  It  is  the  standing  enquiry  of  all 
the  ages,  the  interrogation  which  rises  in  the 
mind  of  every  serious  man.  Its.  answer  dis- 
closes the  bases  of  spiritual  law.  The  Deca- 
logue is  itself  one  of  the  answers  to  that 
standing  inquiry.  And  the  Decalogue  im- 
plies that  man's  spirit,  the  thing  which  each 
man  has  got  to  train  in  order  to  satisfy 
his  nature,  is  described  analytically  by  these 
ten  laws.  Each  law  grasps  and  declares  a  fact 
in  the  composition  of  our  spirit.  Each  law 
points  out  that  its  particular  element  in  the 
spirit's  constitution,  must  have  its  due  exercise 
in  order  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  shall  develop. 
Without  a  natural  foundation  there  could  be 
no  spiritual  structure.  Without  the  natural 
fact  of  a  spiritual  constitution,  in  right  of 
which  we  call  ourselves,  intelligently,  the  image 
of  God,  there  could  be  no  exercise  or  enforce- 
ment of  law.  But  because  the  spirit  has  a  na- 
ture, because  man  starts  as  a  divine  image, 
therefore,  spiritual  law  is  intelligible,  a  spir- 
itual career  is  possible,  the  divine  image,  photo- 
graphed thus  on  the  film  of  the  soul  can  be  de- 
veloped into  a  divine  life. 

It  may  now  be  said  once  again,  that  the 
spiritual  life,  which  is  man's  destiny,  the  goal 
of  man's  instinct,  the  station  toward  which  all 
the  forces  in  experience  impel  a  man, — is  a  life 


10         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPHIIT 

governed  according  to  certain  ascertainable 
laws.  The  historic  statement  of  those  laws  is 
the  Decalogue.  And,  read  under  the  light  of 
that  Christ  life  which  is  the  specimen  spiritual 
life,  the  Decalogue  is  the  code  of  the  spirit. 
Each  of  the  laws,  as  interpreted  by  a  ChristN, 
governed  mind,  is  natural,  positive,  and  moral. 
Each  law  satisfies  the  requirements  of  that  le- 
gality which  attaches  to  the  life  of  the  spirit  of 
a  man. 


PART  II 
THE  CODE 


THE  FIRST  LAW 

The  natural  fact  underlying  the  first  law  is 
the  fact  that  man  is  a  thinker.  That  God  ex- 
ists is  a  conclusion  of  a  thought  process  only. 
It  is  thought  rather  than  observation,  which 
yields  both  the  result  God  and  the  result  One- 
God  rather  than  many.  Revelation,  which  is 
commonly  contrasted  with  observation,  can 
yield  a  result  only  by  the  superior  agency  of 
thought.  Thought  is  the  interpreter  of  both 
observation  and  revelation.  Hence,  therefore, 
the  first  law  whose  language  is  "I  am  the  Lord 
thy  God  and  thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods 
but  me,"  is  founded  on  the  elemental  fact  that 
man  is  by  nature  a  thinker. 

The  connection  between  the  fact  and  the  law 
appears  further  from  the  familiar  considera- 
tion that  thought  is  the  final  exhibitor  of  real- 
ity. What  we  mean  by  real  things  are  such 
things  as  force  themselves  into  human  con- 
sciousness and  can  by  no  means,  for  any  length 
of  time  by  any  number  of  men  and  women,  be 
kept  out  of  consciousness.  Some  real  things, 
indeed,  are  more  fundamental  than  others.  The 
more  fundamental  real  things — such  as  elemen- 
tary moral  principles,  and  the  being  of  God — 
have  forced  themselves  continually  into  the  hu- 
man consciousness  from  the  very  beginning  of 
history.      Other  real  things — ^whether  they  be 

13 


14         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

of  physical  or  spiritual  construction,  material 
forces  like  electricity,  or  moral  forces  such  as 
the  question  of  slavery,  or  religious  problems 
such  as  the  question  of  miracles — such  things 
come  into  human  consciousness  at  some  specific 
time  in  human  history.  At  that  time  only,  it 
may  be,  is  the  reality  of  such  things  acknowl- 
edged. But  whatever  the  real  thing  be — a  prin- 
ciple, an  idea,  a  material  body,  a  problem,  a 
social  propensity,  an  object  of  faith, — ^it  is  real 
only  if  it  forces  itself  into  consciousness. 

We  may  say  what  we  please  about  the  possi- 
bility of  our  being  altogether  and  entirely  mis- 
taken in  our  intellectual  conclusions,  or  too  dull 
to  receive  an  effect  from  things  as  they  really 
are,  but  the  fact  remains  that  what  we  must 
mean  by  reality  is  just  this  invasion  of  our 
mental  realm.  For  us  there  is  no  other  reality. 
And  one  reality  which  this  man  or  that  man 
may  recognize  with  loud  acclaim  to-day,  is  no 
whit  more  real  than  an  entirely  different  sort 
of  real  object  of  which  this  same  man  may  be 
temporarily  oblivious  but  of  which  the  race  as 
such  may  be  habitually  conscious.  One  man 
to-day  may  shout  his  all-absorbing  conscious- 
ness of  physical  material.  But  to-day  or  to- 
morrow or  the  day  after,  the  human  race  will 
repeat  its  confession  of  consciousness  of  God. 
f?And  the  reality  of  God,  of  one  God  rather  than 
many  because  thought  rests  only  in  unity, — 
is  the  same  sort  of  reality  and,  by  a  wise  man, 


THE  FIRST  LAW  15 

to  be  estimated  as  of  the  same  sort  of  practical 
import  as  the  reality  of  physical  material,  of 
moral  principle,  or  of  social  propensity. 

We  talk  much  of  our  materialism,  but  we 
know  that  reality  for  us  is  still  reality  for 
thought  only.  The  sun  causes  vibrations  of 
ether.  Man  thinks  about  it,  calls  the  effect 
light,  and  then,  with  naive  disdain,  talks  as  a 
materialist  and  forgets  his  thought  which  alone 
gave  him  an  understanding  of  his  experience. 
A  bell  rings,  and  men  say  they  hear  the  sound 
of  a  bell.  But  what  happens  is  that  men  receive 
a  sensation  from  air  waves  which  strike  against 
their  ear  drums,  and  then  their  thought  inter- 
prets their  sensation.  But  still,  neglectful  of 
the  thought  which  alone  gives  intelligibility  to 
our  sensation,  we  say  we  hear  the  sound  of  the 
bell.  It  is  our  own  thought  that  we  hear.  It 
is  by  thought,  not  by  sensation,  that  men  have 
studied  and  catalogued  the  world.  By  thought, 
not  by  sensation,  men  have  worked  out  the 
meanings  of  experience.  By  thought  they  have 
discerned  laws  within  the  operations  of  thought 
itself.  By  thought  they  have  produced  what 
is  the  only  real  world  for  man,  the  world  of  in- 
telligence, the  world  of  mind.  Of  course  sensa- 
tion has  been  necessary  to  the  elevation  of  men. 
As  the  marble  to  the  sculptor,  the  oil  and  colors 
to  the  painter,  as  the  audible  word  to  the  poet, 
— so  is  sensation  to  the  thinker.  But  marble 
does  not  create  the  statue ;  oil  and  colors  do  not 


16         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

make  the  picture;  nor  words  the  poem.  There 
are  as  much  marble,  oil  and  color,  there  are 
as  many  sensations  in  Africa  as  in  Europe  or 
America.  Sensation  is  the  battle  ground  of  hu- 
man advancement,  but  thought  is  the  weapon 
by  which  mankind  subdues  the  world. 

And  in  all  the  thinking  of  men  there  has 
been,  as  an  essential  quality  of  thought  itself,  a 
dominating  sense  of  unity.  Man  is  a  thinker; 
as  such  preeminently,  does  he  face  the  world. 
But  such  is  the  quality  of  this  peculiar  instru- 
ment that  each  man  faces  the  world  under  the 
necessity  of  discovering  the  unity  of  himself 
and  the  unity  of  the  universe.  Consciousness 
of  self  is  a  man's  destiny.  And  consciousness 
of  God  is  a  man's  destiny.  Man  is  a  thinker. 
But  to  think  is  to  discover  an  inviolable  integer 
of  self,  and  also  an  inviolable  integer,  a  greater, 
another  self  behind  the  shifting  phenomena  of 
earth. 

Even  more  legibly  than  the  fact  that  man  is 
a  thinker,  there  is  written  in  our  members  the 
positive  and  compulsive  assertion,  thou  shalt 
think,  thou  shalt  live  by  the  exercise  of  reason. 

Nature  and  circumstance  drive  men  under 
the  operation  of  this  law.  To  circumvent  the 
brutalities  of  beast  life,  man  has  to  use  thought. 
To  outwit  the  destructive  attack  of  disease 
and  storm  man  is  obliged  to  use  thought.  By 
thought  only  may  man  conquer  the  varying 
but    always    death-dealing    seasons.      To  lure 


THE  FIRST  LAW  17 

fruit  out  of  the  reluctant  soil,  man  must  think. 
To  create  society,  to  create  civilization  and  its 
institutions,  man  must  think.  This,  indeed,  is 
not  merely  a  general,  a  racial  requirement;  it 
is  an  individual  obligation.  There  are  men  to- 
day who,  because  they  will  not^  think^  exhibit 
the  brutalities  of  beast  life.  Countless  men 
and  women  because  they  will  not  think,  are,  to- 
day, the  victims  of  wind  and  weather  and  con- 
tagion. There  are  men  and  women  and  children 
who,  with  a  fruitful  earth  lying  fallow  at  their 
feet,  have  no  food  because  they  do  not  think. 
The  law  is  not  general  only,  it  is  individual. 
And  it  applies  now  as  it  has  applied  always.  It 
was  man's  thought  gripping,  by  the  power  of 
the  instinct  for  unity,  the  thought  of  the  one 
mind  which  is  within  the  visible  world,  which 
turned  man  away  from  the  beast  that  man 
might  be  toward  the  beckoning  archangel,  the 
divine  ruler  that  man  can  be.  It  was  man's 
thought  in  active  operation  which  transformed 
social  and  physical  disorder;  out  of  chaos, 
which  was  nothing,  brought  intelligibility, 
which  is  reality,  which  is  something.  In  the 
beginning  was  the  Logos,  that  is.  Reason.  In 
the  beginning,  when  things  started,  what 
started  them  was  infused  thought.  Man's- 
start,  man's  progress  was  thought,  and  it  is 
thought  still.  Circumstance  beat  on  man  to 
make  him  think.  Nature  took  up  the  Creator's 
will  to  compel  man  to  think.     And    it   is    still 


18         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

true  for  all  and  for  each  that  Necessity  tries  to 
compel  a  man  to  be  himself,  that  is,  to  be  a 
thinker. 

When  we  tell  over  the  steps  in  the  progress 
of  men,  we  find  that  we  have  to  yield  the  honor 
of  leadership  to  thinkers.  Not  to  logic  chop- 
pers; not  to  sophists;  not  to  bookmakers,  are 
we  largely  indebted;  but  to  men  who  have  col- 
ored life  with  mind,  to  men  not  with  hoes  but 
with  ideas,  to  men  who,  as  Washington  and 
Wellington  did,  have  won  campaigns  with  di- 
vine thought;  to  men  who,  as  Luther  and  Lin- 
coln did,  have  recreated  institutions  with 
thought;  to  men  who,  as  Darwin  did,  overcame 
the  earth  with  thought;  who  resurrected  souls, 
as  Brooks  did,  with  thought;  to  men  who  lived 
and  worked  with  thought  as  did  Jesus  Christ 
who  was  such  Reason  as  was  with  God  and  was 
God. 

All  men  are  thinkers.  That  is  more  their 
nature  than  it  is  their  nature  to  be  bipeds.  It 
was  common  once  to  describe  the  root  differ- 
ence between  man  and  the  other  creatures  as 
Reason.  Man  has  reason;  other  creatures 
have  not.  To-day  this  distinction  is  accepted 
with  qualification,  for  it  is  now  thought  that 
creatures  other  than  man  possess  reason  to 
some  appreciable  degree.  The  difference  is  not 
precisely  one  of  possession,  but  one  of  respon- 
sible use.  In  man,  reason,  the  engine  of 
thought,  is  not  merely  prominent  as  a  charac- 


THE  FIRST  LAW  19 

teristic  power  but  also  it  inherits  tasks  and  du- 
ties which  are  peculiar  to  developed  thought. 
Man  is  a  thinker.  So,  it  is  sometimes  said,  is 
a  horse.  So,  indeed,  it  is  sometimes  supposed, 
is  the  vine  which  creeps  toward  the  place  pre- 
pared for  its  support.  But  man's  thought  is 
so  full  of  duty  that  a  man  may  not  be  content 
with  the  mere  prattle  of  reason  such  at  satis- 
fies the  lower  creatures,  but  he  must  be  a  theor- 
ist, a  philosopher,  an  idealist,  a  dweller  in  a 
world  of  mind, — or  else  miss  manhood.  All 
men  are  pressed  upon  by  forces  which,  by  the 
mercy  of  God,  try  to  compel  men  to  live  accord- 
ing to  the  positive,  health-giving  law  of  the 
spirit.  Thou  shalt  think. 

But  thou  shalt  think  correctly.  This  is  the 
completed  utterance  of  the  first  law  of  the  code ; 
and  this  language  gives  body  to  the  moral  pur- 
port of  this  first  law. 

For  it  is  not  enough  to  be  content  with  an 
endowed  mind.  Nor  is  it  enough  to  give  the 
power  of  thought  abundant  exercise.  Content 
with  the  possession  of  the  oracles  of  God  may 
result  in  spiritual  miserliness.  Sophistry,  Jes- 
uitry are  not  intellectual  goals;  they  are  intel- 
lectual diseases.  Mephistophelean  or  Napole- 
onic use  of  intelligence  is  not  the  fruit  of  obe- 
dience but  of  disobedience  of  the  first  law  of 
the  spirit's  life.  A  man  must  think  correctly; 
he  must  succeed  in  thought.  Unless  he  gains 
the  vital  rest  of  union  with  the  mind  of  God, 


«0         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

unless,  in  other  words,  he  gains  the  equipoise 
of  truth,  a  man  will  die  spiritually.  Just  be- 
cause man  is  by  nature  a  thinker;  just  because 
there  is  this  fact,  namely,  a  creature  whose 
characteristic  power  and  dominant  responsi- 
bility is  thought, — therefore  thought  and  its 
goal,  God,  are  the  very  first  truth  about  human 
nature  and  human  welfare. 

Because  man  is  a  thinker,  therefore,  so  man 
must  conclude,  the  Eternal  Mind  exists.  Be- 
cause man  must  think,  therefore,  man  must  seek 
the  Eternal  Mind.  And  because  man,  under 
the  necessities  of  his  highest  life,  must  seek  the 
Eternal  Mind,  therefore  man  must  think  ac- 
cording to  the  moral  law,  he  must  think  cor- 
rectly, in  conformity  with  everlasting  fact,  and 
must  find  his  rest  and  his  reward  in  the  intel- 
lectual integrity  of  God. 

This  is  the  notion  back  of  the  really  great 
word  Orthodox.  It  has  been  laughed  out  of 
use.  Great  words,  seized  by  parties,  are  prone 
to  take  on  two  meanings,  one,  majestic  and  ex- 
alting, which  cannot  be  lost  except  at  our  hu- 
man expense;  one,  petty,  disputatious,  irritat- 
ing, which  cannot  be  kept  except  at  our  human 
expense.  The  great  word  orthodox  has  suf- 
fered from  insult.  It  means  thought  coincident 
with  God's  thought.  It  means  man  palpitating 
with  desire  to  get  his  mind  in  union  with  the 
Eternal  Reason.  It  means  the  throbbing  will 
of  all  the  human  life  that  ever  lived  to  get  the 


THE  FIRST  LAW  21 

best  member  that  it  has,  which  is  its  mind,  to 
name  and  praise  the  living  God.  We  know 
well  that  this  word  was  once  great  and  majestic 
in  its  use.  Only  a  gracious  and  noble  ortho- 
doxy could  have  produced  the  language  of 
Christian  worship  in  prayer,  in  creed  and 
dogma.  Thought,  splendidly  reverent  but 
splendidly  bold,  tried,  in  the  Christian  creed, 
to  describe  for  our  intellectual  guidance,  the 
historic  activity  of  God.  Thought,  sweet  with 
moral  flavor,  eager  to  reveal  truth  and  honor 
it,  in  creed  and  prayer  and  song  named  the 
one  great  divine  Mind  by  the  most  human  of 
all  the  many  names  for  God:  Father,  Son,  and 
Spirit.  Orthodoxy  as  an  instinct,  made  men 
know  that  intellectual  integrity  can  be  in  God 
only,  so  that  to  be  of  honest  mind  is  to  be  in 
God,  and  to  be  in  God  must  be  to  be  of  honest 
mind. 

Thou  art  a  thinker;  thou  shalt  think;  and 
thou  shalt  think  correctly, — says  the  first  law 
of  our  spirit's  life.  And  the  law  works  in  our 
members.  It  is  part  of  the  way  that  we  are 
made.  It  is  part  of  the  way  of  life  decreed  for 
man's  travel. 

Jesus  stated  this  same  law,  only  in  another 
form.  Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods  but 
me, — is  one  form.  There  is  a  God,  but  there 
is  but  one  God, — ^because  thought  is.  We  must 
think;  we  must  think  aright;  that  is  the  path 
to  the  fruition  of  our  spirit.     This  is  one  way 


«2         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPHIIT 

of  putting  the  law.     Jesus's  way  was  only  a 
difference  of  language,    the    meaning    was  the 
f  same, — Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with 
all  thy  mind. 

A  man  who  links  his  mind  to  God's  mind  is, 
so  far,  living  a  spiritual  life.  He  may  be 
trained  in  the  schools  or  untrained.  But  train- 
ing has  nothing  to  do  with  the  actual  operation 
of  the  law.  As  the  laws  of  chemistry  work  on 
a  mountain  top  or  in  a  valley,  so  the  laws  of 
the  spirit  of  a  man  work  in  men  educated  or 
uneducated,  rich  or  poor,  prominent  or  ob- 
scure. God's  mind  is,  in  one  word,  Christ. 
The  man  who  thinks  in  accord  with  God's  mind 
is  a  spiritual  man  and  will  bring  forth  the 
fruits  of  the  divine  Spirit.  It  is  not  such  a 
man  who  produces  a  rich  crop  of  excuses  for 
the  blunders  which  injure  mankind.  It  is  not 
such  a  man  who  excludes  ignorance  from  a 
genuine  responsibility.  It  is  not  such  a  man 
who  divorces  thought  from  conduct  and  makes 
vital  separation  between  belief  and  opinion 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  dignity  and  com- 
pletion of  life  on  the  other  hand.  Indeed 
the  first  effect  of  reverent  thinking  is  the  sense 
that  all  our  life  is  of  one  piece  and  that  "The 
head  is  not  more  native  to  the  heart,  the  hand 
more  instrumental  to  the  mouth"  than  is 
thought  to  conduct  or  responsibility  to 
thought.  To  think  with  God  is  to  think  aright. 
On  the  other  hand    to  think    awry    is  to  miss 


THE  FIRST  LAW  23 

God.  It  has  ever  been  the  fool,  the  clever  fool, 
— ^who  never  paused  to  ask  what  his  clever 
thought  itself  is, — ^who  said  in  his  heart  "There 
is  no  God."  But  the  man  who  thinks  according 
to  this  first  law  of  the  spirit,  because  he  thinks 
dutifully,  because  he  thinks  accurately,  that 
thinking  man,  bold  to  experiment,  humble 
enough  to  learn,  honorable  enough  to  pay  every 
cost  of  pain  required  to  purchase  truth,  that 
man,  whether  his  field  of  thought  be  narrow  or 
expanded,  finds  God  and  is,  so  far,  a  spiritual 
man. 


THE  SECOND  LAW 

MAN  AS   ADMIRER 

Thou  shalt  not  make  to  thyself  any 
graven  image,  nor  the  Hkeness  of 
anything  that  is  in  heaven  above,  or 
in  the  earth  beneath,  or  in  the  water 
xmder  the  earth;  thou  shalt  not  bow 
down  to  them,  nor  worship  them ;  for 
I  the  Lord  thy  God  am  a  jealous 
God,  and  visit  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
upon  the  children,  unto  the  third  and 
fourth  generation  of  them  that  hate 
me ;  and  show  mercy  unto  thousands 
in  them  that  love  me  and  keep  my 
commandments . 

Thou  shalt  admire  aright. 


THE  SECOND  LAW 

The  second  law  governing  the  life  of  a  man's 
spirit,  is  based  on  the  natural  fact  that  man  is 
an  admirer.  As  man  is  a  thinker  by  nature, 
so  by  nature  man  is  also  an  admirer,  and  upon 
that  fact  his  life  depends. 

The  epigram  "Man  lives  by  his  admira- 
tions" is  familiar.  It  means,  obviously,  that 
admiration, — as  contrasted  with  suspicion  and 
contempt,  or  even  with  exertion  or  meditation, 
— quickens  a  man's  vitality. 

A  lover  is  in  a  pretty  vital  condition.  His 
fears,  at  which  men  sometimes  laugh,  are  yet 
the  fruit  of  an  invigorated  fancy.  His  absorp- 
tion, while  it  has  an  almost  comic  side,  is  the 
fruit  of  a  quickened  power  of  concentration. 
But  besides  these  double-faced  qualities  the 
lover  is  strangely  capable  of  resolution  and  of 
enterprise.  Dignity,  too,  dates  often  from 
falling  in  love.  Such  a  condition  is  a  vital  one, 
and  it  is  bom  of  admiration.  So,  also,  a  man 
devoted  to  a  specific  career  is  strangely  vital. 
He  has  ability  to  suffer.  He  is  able  to  wait. 
He  is  capable  of  contrivance.  He  can  perse- 
vere indefinitely.  He  is  irrepressible.  Such 
a  condition  is  a  vital  one,  and  it  is  born  in  him 
of  his  admiration  for  his  work. 

By  this,  therefore,  it  is  wisely  said,  a  man 
lives.     From  it  come  elation  and  exuberance. 

^7 


28         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

From  it  come  buoyancy,  magnetism,  charm. 
From  it,  as  though  it  were  a  magic  treasure- 
box,  a  man  brings,  without  knowing  how  and  to 
his  own  surprise,  a  lavish  plenty  of  the  qualities 
which  make  life  attractive  and  worth  while.  Ad- 
miration is  the  secret.  Admiration  is  the  natural 
fact  on  which  is  built  the  structure  of  vital,  of 
desirable  life.  Man  is  an  admirer.  He  is  that 
sort  of  creature.  So  obvious  is  the  fact  that 
there  is  an  epigram  about  it. 

And  there  is  laid  upon  a  man  the  positive 
and  compulsive  demand  "Thou  shalt  admire." 
There  is  neither  speech  nor  language  but  the 
voice  of  this  demand  is  heard  by  everyone.  The 
forces  innate  in  man's  spirit  strain,  like  impris- 
oned gases,  to  express  themselves  in  admiration. 
The  forces  lodging  in  the  outer  world  beckon 
and  lure  a  man  to  lose  himself  and  be  happy  in 
an  object  of  admiration.  It  is  the  same  with 
this  law  as  with  all  divine  law.  Nature  and  cir- 
cumstance conspire  to  enforce  submission,  to 
compel  one's  admiration  into  ardent  exercise. 

And  man  does  admire.  He  admires  or  he 
dies.  No  such  thing  as  a  thorough  nil  admirari 
policy  is  possible.  As  soon  may  a  stone  flung 
into  the  air,  refuse  to  rise  or  fall.  A  man  must, 
and  a  man  does  admire  something,  or  he  dies. 
He  may  be  indiscriminate ;  he  may  be  promiscu- 
ous ;  he  may  be  fickle ;  but  none  the  less  the  law 
works  in  his  members  as  forcibly  as  the  law  of 
respiration,  and  the  man  proceeds  daily  upon 


THE  SECOND  LAW  29 

his  selection  of  divinities.  It  may  be  a  woman ; 
it  may  be  a  man ;  it  may  be  a  career ;  it  may  be 
pleasure;  it  may  be  a  mere  quality  of  temper 
like  indifference;  it  may  be  riches,  power, 
knowledge,  or  God.  But  whatever  it  be,  it  is 
an  object  reached  for  by  the  eager  hand  of  ad- 
miration whose  motive  is  to  bind  the  man  to 
something  which  already  deserves  applause. 
There  is  a  world  about  a  man,  a  world  full  of 
things  visible  and  things  invisible, — and  the 
man,  created  with  that  sort  of  impulse  which 
bids  him  yield  himself  up  as  food,  seeks  by  the 
force  of  nature  to  find  his  life  by  losing  it  in 
something  got  at  by  admiration  and  by  admira- 
tion only. 

This  is  the  root  of  the  ideality  and  of  the 
purest,  the  most  efficient  righteousness  of  man- 
kind. "Thou  shalt  admire"  is  the  law.  There- 
fore we  make  for  ourselves  gods.  It  is  God's 
law  that  we  shall  do  so.  God  himself  is  the 
first  cause  of  all  gods.  And  only  because  he  is 
the  God  of  gods  does  this  law,  in  its  universal 
operation,  bring  some  of  the  children  of  men  to 
its  complete,  its  satisfying  obedience. 

For  the  God  of  all  gods  has  made  the  very 
goodness  of  the  things  that  men  admire  to  bring 
a  man  into  injury  and  hurt  unless  above  all 
gods  a  man  admires  the  true,  the  Christlike,  the 
Sovereign  Spirit.  What  man  admires  is  good. 
In  itself  it  is  good.  That  is  why  a  man  gives  it 
his  admiration.     Pleasure,  fame,  riches,  power, 


80         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

food,  a  woman,  wit, — they  are  good.  It  is  an 
idle,  foolish  lie  to  say  that  badness  is  in  these 
objects  essentially.  They  may  be  the  instru- 
ments of  a  good  life  just  as  surely  as  they  may 
be  the  instruments  of  an  evil  life.  The  quarrel 
with  these  divinities  is  the  well-worn  problem  of 
supremacy.  "Thou  shalt  admire" — is  the  law 
which  agitates  but  also  guides  every  man.  It  is 
not,  however,  the  completed  frame  of  this  law. 
Thou  shalt  admire  aright;  thou  shalt  admire 
that  which  is,  above  all  else,  admirable, — is  the 
completed  frame.  In  the  words  of  the  spiritual 
man  the  frame  of  this  law  is  different  although 
the  meaning  is  the  same:  Thou  shalt  love  the 
Lord,  thy  God,  the  I  Am,  the  Living  Spirit, 
with  all  thy  heart.  The  Living  God,  the  Christ- 
revealed  God,  the  Eternal  Spirit,  which  alone 
can  have  provided  this  admirable  world, — is 
the  God  of  gods,  and  to  this  object  every  man 
who  lives  as  a  man  must  direct  his  admiration. 
Herein  is  the  tragedy  which  thrives  upon 
this  law  of  a  man's  life.  For  this  moral  element 
is  fair  but  cruel.  Thou  shalt  admire  is  an  easy 
law.  All  the  lovelinesses  of  this  abounding 
world  help  a  man  to  move  with  almost  boister- 
ous obedience  upon  this  general,  this  broad  and 
winding  path.  A  career,  a  sensation,  a  reputa- 
tion, an  accomplishment,  a  woman, — ^what  a 
world  of  divinities  there  are!  But  over  all  is 
one  God.  These  manifold  divinities  themselves 
have  a  Father,  a  Sovereign,  a  Sanctifier.  These 


THE  SECOND  LAW  81 

may  be  admired  healthily  only  by  him  who 
most  of  all  admires  their  God.  With  their 
God,  a  man  who  admires  them  and  whatever 
else  is  good  because  of  a  prior  admiration  for 
their  and  man's  own  Christlike  Sovereign,  has 
joined  the  ranks  of  the  most  effective  people. 
But  without  their  God,  a  man  who  admires  the 
greatest  or  the  least  of  these  lower  divinities  is 
turned  toward  destruction.  And  here  is  the  ap- 
parent cruelty,  in  that  there  is  laid  upon  man 
the  heavy  tax  of  admiration  not  for  what  man 
pleases  but  for  the  Living  God. 

It  is,  however,  from  manhood  made  mighty 
by  obedience  to  this  so-styled  cruelty  that  hu- 
man progress  can  most  easily  be  traced.  Ad- 
miration for  the  Living  God — ^was  the  root  of 
Israel.  -Admiration  for  the  gracious,  mani- 
foldly vital  God — was  the  root  of  Greece.  Ad- 
miration for  that  potent  God  who  embodies  jus- 
tice— was  the  root  of  Rome.  Admiration  for 
the  Christlike  God  was  and  is  the  root  of  Chris- 
tendom. And  Israel,  Greece,  and  Rome,  and 
Christendom  are  the  rocks  of  human  attainment 
as  of  human  expectation.  In  them  have  the 
generations  of  the  earth  been  blessed.  Because 
of  them  has  mercy  from  on  high  been  showered 
upon  the  race  of  man. 

For  it  is  the  man  who  obeys  the  laws  of  the 
spirit,  the  spiritual  man,  who  has  done  the  work 
which  has  been  done  on  earth.  And  nothing 
can  be  clearer  than  the  assertion  that  that  man 


32         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

is  spiritual  who,  looking  with  delight  upon  the 
world  which  is  so  good,  makes  yet  no  idol  of  its 
excellences  whereto  to  submit  his  soul  but  un- 
qualifiedly, heartily,  and  intelligently  admires 
the  Sovereign,  the  Monarch,  the  Christlike  God 
of  gods. 


THE  THIRD  LAW 
MAN  AS  CREATIVE  WORKER 

Thou  shalt  not  take  the  Name  of 
the  Lord  thy  God  in  vain;  for  the 
Lord  will  not  hold  him  guiltless,  that 
taketh  his  Name  in  vain. 

Thou  shalt  create  aright. 


THE  THIRD  LAW 

The  natural  fact  on  which  the  third  law  of 
man's  spirit  stands,  is  the  fact  that  man  is  a 
creator. 

Creation  is  an  extensive  idea.  When  we  say 
"God  is  the  One  Creator,"  we  are  speaking  in 
the  language  of  the  insoluble  problem  of  ex- 
istence itself.  Who  made  the  material  of  the 
world,  the  substance  which  we  think  cannot  vary 
at  any  time  in  quantity, — who  made  it.f^  Who 
or  what  made  the  spiritual  beings,  the  people, 
who  inhabit  the  earth?  We  answer,  "God." 
And  although  in  this  answer  there  is  concealed, 
as  we  know,  a  host  of  problems,  yet  we  are  con- 
tent so  to  explain  the  unexplained  mystery  of 
existence.  In  this  sense  of  creation  man  is  no 
creator  at  all.  But  creation  is  an  extensive  idea, 
and  the  common  understanding  of  it  does  not 
begin  until  after  existence  has  been,  presuma- 
bly, accounted  for.  In  this  common  under- 
standing man  is  as  God  is  a  creator. 

For,  according  to  the  familiar  poem,  in  the 
beginning  of  the  creative  enterprises  of  God 
the  earth  already  was.  It  was  without  form  and 
void.  And  God  laid  His  word.  His  idea.  His 
reason.  His  spirit  upon  it, — and  then  the  dra- 
matic course  of  continuous  creation  got  under 
way.     To-day  we  are  accustomed  to  say  that 

35 


S6         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

creation  is  a  continuous  process.  It  is  the  push 
that  comes  from  the  squaring  of  work  to  the 
ideal  intention.  God,  the  Creator,  is  forever 
busy  with  His  worldful  of  things  and  people. 
In  this  extensive  sense  of  creation  man  is,  quite 
as  really  as  God  is,  a  creator.  And  the  third 
law  of  I  he  spirit  of  a  man  is  based  upon  this 
fact. 

It  is  important  to  get  the  idea  of  man  as 
creator  clear  and  distinct.  To  say  that  man  is 
a  laborer  is  not  enough.  The  idea  must  be  suf- 
ficient to  serve  as  a  foundation  not  for  discom- 
fort, nor  yet  for  good  luck,  nor  yet  for  art  only, 
but  for  the  building  of  human  character. 

Mere  labor,  mere  drudging  exertion,  toilsome 
effort,  or  work  containing  no  creative  elements, 
do  not  possess  the  cohesive  dignity  which  is 
needed  to  uphold  a  character.  Every  animal, 
every  vegetable,  is  born  to  labor  and  work. 
"They  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin"  is  true  of 
them  only  in  the  language  of  human  toiling 
and  human  spinning;  they  have  their  own  sort 
of  work.  But  they  have  no  career  in  character. 
Indeed,  one  fattest  root  of  trouble  for  men  is 
their  content  with  such  analysis  of  their  own 
nature  as  obscures  or  misnames  their  native  dig- 
nity and  leaves  them  too  indiscriminate  amongst 
the  countless  atoms  of  the  world.  Man  is  a 
worker,  a  drudge,  a  laborer.  So  is  a  bee,  or  an 
ant,  or  a  maggot.     With  such  analysis  of  him- 


THE  THIRD  LAW  87 

self,  with  such  implied  specification  of  his  quali- 
ties, a  man  is  certain  to  esteem  his  life  as  of  a 
piece  in  dignity  or  indignity  with  the  maggot 
or  the  bee. 

But  the  facts  of  the  case  are  otherwise.  Man 
is  a  worker, — but  he  is  more.  The  root  of  the 
opinion  about  the  curse  of  work  is  the  instinc- 
tive sense  that  a  man's  work  has  got  to  contain 
such  quality  as  lifts  man  nearer  to  God,  or  else 
it  is  actually  a  damning  influence.  A  peculiar 
quality  of  work  it  is  which  is  demanded  of  a 
man.  Upon  human  exertion  the  supremest  gov- 
ernment has  laid  a  dignifying  tax.  Man  is,  it 
is  true,  a  worker  like  a  maggot ;  but  man  is  also 
an  architect.  Man  is  a  laborer  hke  an  ant ;  but 
man  is  also  a  designer.  Man  is  a  drudge  like  a 
bee;  but  he  is  also  an  originator  and  a  pioneer. 
Man  is  an  actor  ;he  is  an  automatic  machine  like 
a  toy  or  a  bug;  but  also  he  is  a  leader,  a  con- 
triver, a  creator  like  God. 

Creation  is  the  eff^ective  application  of  rea- 
son, idea,  mind,  or  imagination  to  whatever  in- 
struments stand  waiting  to  be  used.  The  man 
who  thinks  out  a  house,  a  machine,  a  roadway, 
and  by  force  of  human  energy  gets  constructed 
that  thing  which  is  in  his  thought,  is  a  creator. 
An  eff^ective  designer  is  a  creator.  A  thinker 
who  incarnates  his  thought  is  a  creator.  A 
schemer,  a  leader,  a  planner,  an  originator  is  a 
creator.     And  it  is  this  sort  of  quality  which 


38         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

must  mark  a  man's  work  in  order  that  his  work 
may  dignify  him  essentially. 

Oh,  the  tragic  but  irremediable  complainings 
of  the  workers  in  this  worldful  of  working  men 
and  working  women !  It  is  a  blood-stained  fact, 
but  still  a  fact,  that  their  complainings  shall 
never  cease  while  the  earth  remaineth — except 
by  one  unwelcome  means.  Almost  everywhere 
in  the  ranks  of  men  the  salt  sweat  of  the  worker 
will  forever  gall  him.  The  centre  of  greatest 
pain  in  the  crowded  ranks  may  shift  from  day 
to  day.  The  hand-workers  may,  to-day,  feel 
the  pain  most  keenly.  To-morrow  the  head- 
workers  may  feel  it  most.  The  day  after,  it 
may  be  the  unskilled  man  and  woman  who  will 
most  keenly  feel  it.  But  all  workers  shall  chafe 
and  suffer  and  bleed  till  doomsday — except  by 
one  unwelcome  mercy.  Only  the  worker's  own 
self,  only  the  worker's  own  obedience  can  bring 
this  saving  mercy  to  his  rescue.  This  one  or 
that  one  may  indeed  appear  to  be  saved  from 
inner  agony.  But  he  can  be  really  and  perma- 
nently saved  by  only  one  means  and  one  mercy. 
That  means  and  mercy  is  to  think,  to  believe,  to 
qualify  the  estimate  of  our  own  nature  as 
highly  as  we  ought,  to  count  ourself  and  to  be 
actually  a  creator,  to  put  creative  will  into  our 
work,  to  work  habitually  with  our  spirit.  This 
is  the  decreed  way  by  which  a  man  can  enter 
into  life.     It  is  the  law. 


THE  THIRD  LAW  39 

For  the  truth  is  that  not  only  is  a  man  by  na- 
ture a  creator  like  God  but  also  the  law  works 
in  a  man  with  most  positively  compulsive  force. 
Thou  shalt  be  a  creator.  Thou  shalt  take  the 
name  of  God.  God's  name  is  "The  Creator." 
Thou,  man,  shalt  take  this  name. 

Clearly  this  compulsive  law  is  at  the  root  of 
social  progress.  If  the  human  race  as  a  race 
obeyed  this  law,  sublime  and  majestic  manhood 
would  abound  and  would  dominate  the  world. 
The  obedience  of  the  few,  it  is,  which  has  made 
the  social  world  as  good  as  it  is.  Look  where 
we  will  for  causes  of  the  developed  social  state, 
none  will  appear  as  obviously  forceful  as  this 
law  working  in  harness  with  the  other  laws  of 
the  spirit  of  man.  "Thou  shalt  take  the  name 
of  God  and  be  thyself  a  creator.  Thou  shalt  ap- 
ply thy  idea,  thy  ideal  to  thy  work  and  to  thy 
life."  Is  there  any  law  which  sounds  as  fa- 
miliar and  imperative  as  that.?  In  youth  when 
men  set  their  resolution  into  plan,  each  man 
hears  this  law  above  all  others.  It  runs  parallel 
to  a  man's  own  pleasure.  It  fits  in  with  a  man's 
ambition.  To  be  a  leader,  to  be  a  commander, 
to  be  a  designer,  to  create  something, — that  is 
what  a  man  wants.  He  likes  this  law.  And  yet 
there  is  no  harder  task,  no  severer  strain.  It  is 
an  earnest  of  the  loneliness  of  every  man.  It  is 
the  path  to  distinction  and  isolation.  The  few 
obey.     The  many,  because  of  sloth,  because  of 


40         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

timidity,  because   of  comfort,  forget  the  law. 

But  kings  and  chieftains,  reformers  and 
philosophers,  inventors  and  discoverers,  patriots 
and  martyrs  have  obeyed  the  law  and  by  their 
obedience  have  lifted  up  the  human  world. 
From  savagery  to  sociability,  from  barbarism 
to  civility,  from  servitude  to  citizenship,  from 
despotism  to  freedom,  from  superstition  to  hon- 
est doubt  and  on  to  lighted  truth,  from  ha- 
bitual ignorance  to  habitual  enquiry,  from  the 
ancient  to  the  modern  world,  from  the  old  pa- 
gan, hopeless  humanism  to  the  new  Christian 
humanism, — man  has  moved  under  the  leverage 
of  an  obedience  rendered  by  some  few  men  and 
some  few  women  to  the  law  "Thou  shalt  take 
the  name  of  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  be  as  God 
is,  a  creator."  Liberated  religion  memorializes 
this  obedience.  Manifold  industries,  liberated 
commerce  memorialize  this  obedience.  The  mul- 
tiplied schoolhouses  and  colleges  of  the  world 
testify  that  men  are  trying  to  obey.  Of  the 
just  finished  century  the  characteristic  was,  not 
science  but  the  application  of  science  to  common 
life.  And  what  was  that  application  other  than 
the  endeavor  of  men  to  obey  this  law  working 
in  their  members?  Man  is  by  fact  a  creator. 
The  law  stands  everlastingly,  "Thou,  man,  shalt 
take  the  name  of  God." 

But  not  in  vain,  not  ineffectually,  not  so  that 
the  result  will  be  emptiness  and  worthlessness. 


THE  THIRD  LAW  41 

On  the  contrary,  thou  shalt  take  the  name  of 
God  as  God  takes  it;  thou  shalt  create  virtue. 
Character  is  the  product  which  interests  God 
and  which  enriches  the  world.  Men  of  spirit, 
women  of  spirit,  are  the  pearls,  of  price  hidden 
in  the  fields  of  this  earth.  Personality  is  the 
task  on  which  all  the  instruments  of  God  are 
employed.  It  is  not  a  sunset,  nor  an  eclipse, 
nor  a  tornado  at  sea  which  explains  the  en- 
deavors of  the  forces  of  the  world.  Nor  is  it 
simply  a  man.     But  it  is  a  good  man. 

And  this  faith  is  surely  becoming  more  and 
more  established.  It  may  perhaps  be  denied 
that  a  greater  number  of  persons  or  a  greater 
proportion  of  the  people  are  to-day  better,  that 
is,  more  spiritual,  more  godly,  more  true  and 
right  than  a  thousand  years  ago.  But  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  to-day  it  is  becoming  obvious, 
and  is  more  and  more  admitted,  that  not  only 
the  forces  and  circumstances  of  human  life  but 
also  the  natural  energies  of  the  world  work  to 
produce  manhood.  Sooner  or  later  it  will  be 
easy  to  acknowledge  the  truth  and  easy,  too,  to 
submit  to  it  with  joy.  That  manhood  is  the 
goal  of  things;  that  character,  that  personal 
quality  is  the  meaning  of  things ;  that  character 
is  the  true  riches  and  the  true  efficiency,  this  is 
hard  for  us  to  believe  but  is  yet  the  conviction 
to  which  our  present  world  is  being  rapidly  led. 

For  consider  the  manifold  occupations  of  the 


42         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

modem  world.  There  has  never  been  in  the 
past  anything  like  it.  Does  it  not  compel  belief 
that  the  single  occupation  binding  all  the  work- 
ers of  the  world  together  into  a  single  enterprise 
is  the  common  manhood  of  which  each  man  is 
capable?  Or,  consider  the  vital  strifes  between 
intimate  fellow-workers,  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
the  haves  and  the  have-nots,  in  our  modern 
world.  There  has  never  been  anything  like  this 
strife.  It  is  far  more  intimate  and  immediate, 
it  is  far  more  above  the  plane  of  necessaries  of 
existence  than  any  strifes  in  the  world  before. 
And  it  is  clear  to  any  man  that  the  only  solu- 
tion of  the  strife  is  not  a  wrenching  of  posses- 
sions from  one  side  in  favor  of  the  other  side 
but  such  a  changed  esteem  of  man's  life,  such 
a  changed  esteem  of  possessions,  such  a  center- 
ing of  interest  in  the  man  who  is  to  be  user  and 
master  of  things  for  manhood's  sake,  that 
wealth-worship  and  wealth-strife  will  lose  their 
dignity  before  the  developed  manhood  of  the 
coming  days. 

Or,  again,  consider  the  modem  condition  of 
personal  independence.  It  is  far  more  clear,  it 
is  far  more  real  than  ever  before.  Now,  indeed, 
it  is  almost  past  its  chaotic  stage  in  develop- 
ment. Man  sees  now  with  some  ease  that  to  be 
independent  means  to  will  to  be  dependent  upon 
attested  experts.  It  is  therefore  becoming  easier 
for  a  man  to  say  "I  must  be  both  a  follower 


THE  THIRD  LAW  43 

and  a  leader.  In  most  things,  indeed,  I  must 
follow  obediently  because  my  independence  bids 
me  depend  on  experts  in  their  own  fields.  In 
some  one  or  few  things  my  independence  bids 
me  become  expert  that  I  may  lead."  Modern 
independence  means  on  the  one  hand  obedience, 
on  the  other  hand  leadership.  Thus  have  the 
forces  of  the  world  worked  upon  the  character 
of  men. 

Indeed  the  lessons  of  our  age  and  the  sum  of 
experience  are  clear  in  their  intent  to  make  us 
work  creatively  to  produce  manhood  full  of  vir- 
tue. To  try  to  produce  virtuous  manhood  is 
the  way  to  be  a  virtuous  man.  That  is  the  gist 
of  this  third  law.  A  man  must  work.  He  must 
work  with  an  idea.  And  he  must  work  to  pro- 
duce virtue.  Thou  shalt  take  the  name  of  God 
effectively.  Thou  shalt  create  Godlike  man- 
hood. That  is  the  law  of  our  life.  If  we  are 
to  be  men,  if  we  are  to  stand  and  grow  upon 
the  human  plane  on  which  we  were  bom,  we  are 
bound  to  take  the  name  of  God  not  in  vain  but 
so  that  there  shall  proceed  from  us  an  influence 
productive  not  of  fortune  merely,  not  of  sys- 
tems of  knowledge  merely,  not  of  states  merely, 
not  of  art  merely,  but  of  that  which  is  produci- 
ble in  every  human  life,  manhood.  To  be  a 
spiritual  man,  to  be  a  true  man,  it  is  necessary 
to  be  an  active  partner  in  this  enterprise  of 
God's. 


THE  FOURTH  LAW 

MAN  AS  RECEIVER 

Remember  that  thou  keep  holy  the 
Sabbath-day.  Six  days  shalt  thou 
labor,  and  do  all  that  thou  hast  to  do ; 
but  the  seventh  day  is  the  Sabbath 
of  the  Lord  thy  God.  In  it  thou 
shalt  do  no  manner  of  work;  thou, 
and  thy  son,  and  thy  daughter,  thy 
man-servant,  and  thy  maid-servant, 
thy  cattle,  and  the  stranger  that  is 
within  thy  gates.  For  in  six  days  the 
Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  the 
sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is,  and 
rested  the  seventh  day:  wherefore 
the  Lord  blessed  the  seventh  day, 
and  hallowed  it. 

Thou  shalt  receive  (i.  e.  absorb) 
the  Spirit  of  God. 


THE  FOURTH  LAW 

The  natural  fact  on  which  the  fourth  law  is 
grounded  is  that  man  is  so  made  as  to  be,  it 
may  be  said,  the  very  slave  of  rest. 

Indeed,  it  is  hardly  other  than  a  matter  of 
taste  whether  a  man  be  described  as  a  creature 
that  works  or  as  a  creature  that  rests.  Attach 
dignity  to  the  idea  of  work;  make  work  mean 
an  activity  that  accomplishes  something  worthy ; 
call  that  man  only  a  worker  who  strives  not 
merely  to  keep  himself  and  others  alive,  but  to 
augment  and  deepen  his  own  and  others'  man- 
hood: call  only  such  effort  by  the  honorable 
name  work.  Then  on  the  other  hand,  be  equally 
fair  to  the  idea  of  rest.  Make  rest  mean  re- 
freshment, re-formation,  re-pose,  re-creation,  a 
new  start,  a  new  consecration,  a  new  attachment 
to  an  ideal.  Give  work  its  real,  that  is,  its  ideal 
meaning;  and  give  rest  its  ideal  which  is  its 
real  meaning ;  and  then  it  is  hardly  other  than  a 
matter  of  taste  whether  the  creature  man  be  de- 
fined in  terms  of  work  or  in  terms  of  rest.  In 
this  sense,  man  is  the  only  creature  that  works. 
In  this  sense,  man  is  the  only  creature  that  can 
rest. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  universal  physical  basis 
for  this  human  ability  to  reach  perfectness  in 
both  rest  and  work.     That  physical  basis  com- 

47 


48         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

mon  to  all  creatures,  confirms  the  assertion — 
since  man  is  a  peculiar  creature,  that  man's  rest 
must  be  peculiar  to  man.  The  fact  of  sleep, 
the  actuality  of  fatigue,  the  startling  truth  that 
man  is  so  limited  as  to  spend  almost  half  his 
lifetime  in  unconsciousness,  have  driven  home 
to  man's  wit  in  all  ages  and  places,  a  sense  of 
the  real,  that  is,  the  ideal  contents  of  human  re- 
pose.^ In  all  ages  and  places  there  has  existed 
the  well-known  and  significant  attachment  be- 
tween the  ideas  of  rest  and  worship,  or,  if  you 
choose,  idleness  and  holiness.  An  actual  linkage 
exists  between  these  ideas,  a  linkage  forged  in 
physical  terms.  Rest  is  one  of  the  elementary 
necessities  of  creaturehood.  But  rest,  when  it 
is  a  man's  rest,  is  one  of  the  essential  features 
of  spiritual  living. 

The  word  rest,  as  it  happens,  has  suffered 
from  excessive  use.  The  side  of  its  meaning 
most  in  evidence  is  the  negative  one,  the  ease  of 
idleness,  the  unconsciousness  of  sleep.  Its  other 
side  shows  a  truer  meaning.  For  the  idleness 
and  the  sleep,  indeed  all  the  forms  which  rest  as- 
sumes, have  a  clear,  positive  purpose,  they  obey 
an  obvious  fact  in  man's  constitution,  the  fact 
that  man  is  a  receiver.  To  be  the  slave  of  rest 
is  to  be  obliged  to  act  as  the  receiver  of  power. 

It  is  clear  that  acting  as  a  giver  expresses 
positive  power.  But  also,  to  receive,  to  open 
oneself  so  that  the  forces  of  the  universe  which 


THE  FOURTH  LAW  49 

can  buoy  up  one's  life  shall  have  the  chance  to 
do  so, — expresses  positive  power.  Man  is  made 
so  that  he  can  and  must  receive  into  himself  the 
powers  and  persuasives  of  the  world.  Rest 
names  the  method  or  process;  receptiveness  is 
the  feature,  the  natural  fact  of  man's  make-up. 
A  man  is  made  so  as  to  be  dependent  upon  the 
great,  whole  world.  A  man  is  under  natural 
necessity  to  yield  himself  up  to  the  influence  of 
the  whole.  A  man's  part  is,  indeed,  like  that  of 
the  water  drop  in  the  ocean,  which  can  realize 
within  its  own  small  self  an  ocean's  dignity,  and 
can  do  an  ocean's  work  if  it  will  employ,  by  as- 
similation and  transmission,  not  its  own  power 
but  the  ocean's.  Such  is  a  man's  part.  Such 
positive  receptiveness  is  essential  to  human 
growth. 

And  rest  is  the  expression  of  this  fact.  Con- 
sider rest,  therefore,  in  any  of  its  familiar 
forms. 

Sleep  robs  a  man  of  his  self-imposed  tension 
and  gives  nature  a  chance  to  soothe  him  into 
tranquility.  Idleness,  when  it  offsets  a  usual 
activity,  opens  body  and  mind  alike  to  a  host  of 
potent  influences  which  empower  a  man  as  he 
chooses  for  good  or  ill.  Sport,  which  is  the  next 
form  of  rest,  feeds  the  imagination  and  is  the 
seed  of  victory  in  contests  had  in  other  and  so- 
called  serious  fields.  Why  is  it  true  that  Wel- 
lington won  Waterloo  on  the  foot-ball  field  at 
Eton.^    It  is  an  acceptable  truth.     The  powers 


50         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

of  contest  got  into  him  there,  as  they  get  into 
every  honest  player  who  keeps  play  in  its  right 
place,  and  they  made  Wellington  strong  for 
broadest  battlefields.  So  is  it  in  the  next  form 
of  rest  which  is  diversion.  There,  a  man  turns 
from  action  in  which  compulsion  predominates, 
to  action  over  which  volition  rules,  until  fa- 
tigue, appearing  to  be  destroyed  by  another 
sort  of  fatigue,  succumbs  in  fact  to  that  power 
about  us  which  takes  us  in  charge  at  the  in- 
vitation of  our  relaxation  and  self-f orgetfulness. 
In  diversion,  the  guardianship  of  all  our  affairs 
except  our  hobby,  is  in  the  hands  of  tireless  na- 
ture, and  our  hands  are  free.  ^  And  in  the  high- 
est form  of  rest,  worship,  the  same  process 
operates.  Here,  a  man  worshipping  aright, 
communes  with  the  Eternal  Person,  opens  him- 
self to  the  Supreme  Spirit,  receives  God,  and 
becomes  a  renewed  man.  If  a  man  is  not  rested 
by  what  he  calls  worship  then  that  man  has  not 
worshipped  aright.  If  a  man  has  not  wor- 
shipped aright,  if  a  nation  has  not  learned  to 
worship,  then  that  nation  or  that  man  has  never 
known  the  blessed  possibilities  of  rest. 

Man  at  rest  is  man  acting  for  the  superior 
powers  of  the  universe  as  a  receiver, — like  the 
water  drop  receiving  the  ocean  into  itself.  This 
is  man's  necessity  as  well  as  his  privilege.  It  is 
a  feature  of  man's  nature.  And  the  highest 
form  of  rest,  the  rest  most  needed,  is  that  with 


THE  FOURTH  LAW  61 

which  all  ages  and  all  places  have  in  their  most 
serious  study  identified  rest, — such  worship  as 
allows  a  man  to  receive  into  himself  the  most 
high  and  most  holy  Spirit  of  the  Universal  God. 

It  is  clearly  true  that  "We  can  feed  this  mind 
of  ours  by  a  wise  passiveness."  But  more  is 
true:  we  must- do  it.  Man  is  a  receiver  and  he 
must  receive.  Thou  shalt  keep  holy  the  Sab- 
bath— which  is  the  rest  of  God.  Thou  shalt 
rest  as  God  rests. 

God  rests,  of  course,  in  a  very  clear  and  ob- 
vious way.  Not  by  idleness,  as  quick-tongued 
interpreters  have  said;  not  by  sleep.  God  rests 
by  a  positive  openness  to  truth  and  gracious- 
ness  and  right;  by  contemplation  of  the  orig- 
inal merit  of  His  plan ;  by  meditation  upon  His 
ideal  for  His  creation.  If  God  is  alive,  then 
there  is  truth  in  the  idea  of  His  rest.  And  that 
truth  is  the  same  as  works  through  the  common 
demand  laid  upon  mankind  to  receive  and  be  re- 
stored by  the  mysterious  powers  that  be.  Truth 
is  God's  refreshment.  It  is  man's  too.  Gra- 
ciousness  and  good  are  God's  repose.  They  are 
man's.  God  is  rested  by  the  realization  of  these 
within  Himself. 

And  all  the  multitudinous  voices  of  rest  lay 
a  demand  on  man  that  hints  of  this  same  potent 
repose  to  be  enjoyed  by  him  who  rests  upon  the 
bosom  of  his  God.  "Thou  shalt  rest"  is  the  cry. 
And  generation  after  generation  bends  to  learn 


5«         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

the  lesson.  Sport  and  play  and  holiday ;  games, 
diversion,  quiet;  prayers  and  praise, — these 
are  the  institutions,  quite  as  much  as  any  others, 
by  which  we  study  men.  A  third  of  the  indus- 
trial world  and  more  is  busy  making  play  or 
rest  for  others.  No  one  lives  healthily  a  month 
without  some  deliberate  and  voluntary  diversion. 
And  while  there  are  unhealthy  people  who  do 
not  play,  there  are  none  who  do  not  need  to  re- 
ceive by  some  sort  of  positive  opening  of  their 
soul,  the  powers  that  beat  beneficently  upon 
them.  It  is  no  negative  endeavor.  It  is  a  posi- 
tive need  of  acting  as  a  receiver. 

"Why  do  not  all  the  people  who  play  make 
choice  of  an  amusement  that  shall  be  produc- 
tive?" That  question  is  asked  by  more  than 
one  undiscriminating  and  miscalled  serious  stu- 
dent of  his  kind.  He  thinks  men  are  here  to 
produce  things,  to  adjust  materials,  to  polish 
up  the  earth.  But  that  is  only  part  of  what  we 
are  here  for,  and  the  subordinate  part.  We  are 
here  first  of  all  to  make  good  men.  We  are 
here  to  make  personality.  We  are  here  to  de- 
velop the  image  of  God  which  is  photographed 
on  the  film  of  our  nature  and  which  awaits  our 
developing.  To  do  it  a  man  must  rest.  He 
must  become  a  receiver  of  power.  He  must 
learn  to  do  this  or  else  he  cannot  be  a  man.  And 
he  must  do  it,  not  because  he  can  make  some- 
thing out  of  it,  but  because  he  makes  himself 


THE  FOURTH  LAW  53 

out  of  it.  Until  a  man  begins  to  make  himself, 
he  has  not  begun  to  be  a  man.  And  the  only 
way  to  do  it  is  to  open  the  doors  and  let  the 
mighty  but  delicate  powers  of  the  Great  Spirit 
have  their  chance  to  work  within  the  soul. 

It  is  easy  to  see  why  the  common  sense  of 
men  has  linked  rest  and  worship  together.  And 
it  is  not  difficult  to  see  why  Sunday  questions 
are  so  generally  debated  as  rest  questions  rather 
than  as  worship  questions.  The  physical,  the 
obvious  elements  in  any  problem  tend  to  absorb 
attention.  Nevertheless  the  Sunday  rest  de- 
pends finally  on  Sunday  worship.  Is  worship 
of  God,  the  institutional,  customary,  general 
worship  of  God  necessary  to  the  best  life.?  And 
will  the  people  clamoring  for  rest,  take  rest  in 
this  way  as  far  as  it  is  actually  necessary.? 

In  the  conflict  of  men  there  is  no  certain 
ground  for  human  decisions  except  a  belief  that 
God  demands  this  and  not  that,  and  works  His 
demand  through  the  continual  and  obedient 
operations  of  nature.  If  men  want  a  merely 
inactive,  idle  rest,  they  will  inevitably  come  in 
conflict  with  other  men  who  want  merely  an  ac- 
tive, strenuous  exertion.  If  the  one  is  right, 
the  other  is.  And  men  will  fight  it  out  and  the 
stronger  will  have  their  way.  But  if  neither  is 
right;  if  the  actual  law  of  every  man's  life  is 
"Thou  shalt  rest,  and  thy  rest  must  include  a 
systematic  and  positive  opening  of  thyself  to 


64         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

the  Eternal,  the  Holy  Spirit,"  then  only  when 
that  law  is  accepted  and  obeyed  is  there  a  possi- 
bility that  the  Sabbath  will  be  maintained  and 
that  no  man  shall  lose  his  rest  against  his  will. 

The  fourth  law  in  the  code  of  the  spirit  of 
a  man  stands  actually  so.  A  man  is  a  receiver. 
He  must  receive.  And  he  must  receive  the  Holy 
Spirit.  A  man  must  rest;  and  the  highest  rest, 
the  rest  which  refreshes  and  restores  a  man's 
graciousness  and  purity  and  high  resolve  and 
sanctity,  is  worship  of  God.  This  law  a  man 
must  learn  how  to  keep.  He  must  keep  it  as  a 
man,  that  is,  as  one  amongst  many.  He  and 
his  neighbor  must  bow  before  the  same  and  only 
God. 

And  here  it  must  be  said  that  if  a  man  finds 
the  aids  to  the  keeping  of  this  law  offered  by  the 
institutions  of  to-day  to  be  unfit,  then  the  man 
is  by  that  fact  called  to  be  the  founder  of  new 
institutions.  He  must  find  some  way  whereby 
he  and  others  may  stir  up  within  themselves  a 
best  quality  of  manhood.  Prayer  is  a  way.  The 
Word,  telling  of  other  men  possessed  by  the 
Spirit,  is  a  way.  The  contemplation  of  Christ, 
the  Ideal  Man,  is  a  way.  The  entering  into  the 
meanings  of  Christian  sacrament  and  ceremony 
is  a  way.  The  present  expression  of  any  of 
these  ways  may,  undoubtedly,  be  improved,  and 
it  is  the  duty  of  the  unsatisfied  man  to  do  it. 
Some  way  to  such  rest  as  brings  the  Spirit  of 


THE  FOURTH  LAW  55 

the  Christlike  God  into  our  soul  must  be  trav- 
eled,— for  that  is  an  ordinance  of  nature.  Thou 
art  a  receiver,  a  receptacle,  if  you  choose;  and 
thou  shalt  receive  the  Spirit  of  God. 

Christ  recited  this  law  in  the  familiar  and 
sweeter  way,  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God  with  all  thy  soul."  And  we  need  to  believe 
that  the  love  which  Christ  thus  calls  for  is  no 
indefinite  yearning  and  surging,  but  is  the  open- 
ing of  the  soul  in  such  definite  ways  that  the 
soul  is  rested  and  the  primal  work  of  God,  the 
making  of  a  good  man,  resumed.  This  is  re- 
creation. This  is  reformation  and  refreshment. 
This  is  also  worship  and  rest.  And  it  is  the 
law. 


THE  FIFTH  LAW 

MAN  AS  AN  HEIR 

Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother; 
that  thy  days  may  be  long  in  the 
land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth 
thee. 

Thou  shalt  honor  those  of  whom 
thou  art  a  beneficiary. 


THE  FIFTH  LAW 

The  natural  fact  under  the  fifth  law  of  the 
spirit  is  that  man  is  an  heir.  ^FuU  of  treasure 
is  the  world.  And  the  treasure  is  a  man's.  It 
is  his  by  no  less  dignifying  right  than  the  right 
of  inheritance.     For  a  man  is  an  heir. 

From  his  father  and  his  mother  a  man  in- 
herits both  body  and  health.  From  them,  also, 
with  rare  exception,  come  nurture  and  protec- 
tion. From  them,  by  the  mysterious  transport 
of  the  blood,  if  not  by  the  equally  mysterious 
transmission  through  personal  contact,  come 
disposition  and  quality.  Parents  are  the  Crea- 
tor's agents  for  transferring  this  sort  of  inheri- 
tance to  the  new-comer  to  earth. 

There  is,  however,  a  parentage  less  obvious 
but  no  less  real  than  that  of  the  father  who  be- 
gets and  the  mother  who  bears.  There  is  a 
spirit  ancestry.  The  progenitors  of  to-day  are 
the  men  and  women  who  lived  before  to-day. 
All  the  makers  of  the  past  are  parents  to  the 
man  bom  to-day.  And  he  is  the  heir  of  them 
all.  He  owns  a  spiritual  pedigree.  He  accounts 
for  himself  by  reference  to  his  spiritual  fore- 
fathers. From  them  he  has  inherited  the  influ- 
ences which  make  him  to  be  himself.  The 
wealth  of  some  or  many  of  these  parents  in  the 
past  is  made  over  to  the  new-bom  heir.     The 

69 


60         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

greater  part  of  whatever  a  man  has  or  can  have, 
he  acquires  by  inheritance.  And  he  cannot  help 
this  dependence.  He  cannot  refuse  his  patri- 
mony. The  world  is  made  that  way.  Because 
he  is  a  man  he  is  the  heir  of  men. 

This  natural  fact  that  man  is  an  heir  is  ob- 
vious. 

Politically  we,  as  Americans,  inherit — and 
we  continually  affirm  it — great  riches.  Our 
fathers  in  the  spirit  have  bequeathed  us  politi- 
cal treasure  without  which  we  are  sure  we  could 
not  be  content  to  live.  How  they  could  have 
been  brave  enough,  unselfish  enough,  enough 
influenced  by  consideration  for  children  yet  un- 
born, how  they  could  have  persevered  sufficient- 
ly, we  can  hardly  understand !  We  doubt  if  we 
could  do  such  work.  And  yet  so  far  as  condi- 
tions go,  we  are  much  better  equipped  for  work 
than  our  fathers  were.  For,  indeed,  we  have 
profited  more  than  they  from  their  work.  They 
did  the  work.    We  received,  by  inheritance,  the 

pay. 

The  same  thing  is  obvious  in  religion  so  far 
as  church  conditions  go.  The  treasure  of  a  free 
church,  free  not  merely  from  state  control,  but 
in  its  will  to  deal  with  men  on  the  basis  of  their 
own  freedom  rather  than  on  the  basis  of  a  sup- 
posed servitude  to  evil  from  which  church  force 
sets  a  man  free, — ^this  sort  of  treasure,  this  only 
hope  for  religion  in  our  land,  is  ours  by  inher- 


THE  FIFTH  LAW  61 

itance  from  our  fathers.    They,  not  we,  did  the 
work.    We,  rather  than  they,  own  the  fortune. 

More  obviously  still  this  fact  appears  in  the 
industrial,  scientific,  and  educational  conditions 
of  to-day.  Our  fathers  have  opened  occupa- 
tions, adaptations,  and  knowledge  to  us  in  more 
lavish  measure  than  any  one  of  them  could  have 
imagined.  They  worked  and  saved  and  be- 
queathed. We  inherit  and  possess.  And  in 
our  turn,  we  transfer  a  fortune  bettered  or  im- 
paired to  the  sons  of  our  spirit. 

Other  men  have  labored.  That  is  a  fact.  We 
have  entered  into  their  labors.  That  also  is  a 
fact,  a  fact  in  nature.  Of  the  effects  of  frailty, 
of  failure,  of  disease,  of  sin,  we  are  quick  to 
perceive  our  inheritance.  It  is  just  as  obvious 
that,  day  by  day,  a  man  inherits  the  riches  of 
his  fathers.  Although  we  all  admit  the  inher- 
itance of  ills  and  are  reluctant  to  admit  the  in- 
heritance of  riches,  it  is  clear  that  in  a  progres- 
sive society  the  latter  heritage  is  more  influen- 
tial and  effective  than  the  former. 

But  it  is  important  to  see  what  we  do  not  ac- 
quire by  inheritance.  We  do  not  inherit  virtue. 
We  do  not  inherit  sin.  Merit  and  demerit  are 
not  transferable.  The  effects  of  merit,  the  re- 
sults of  demerit,  the  consequences,  the  wages, 
the  savings  of  endeavor, — such  are  the  prop- 
erty which  is  got  by  inheritance.  There  is, 
perhaps,  such  a  thing  as  an  inherited  force  of 


62         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

habit.  A  force  of  habit  making  toward  virtue  or 
making  toward  vice,  may,  perhaps,  be  inherited. 
But  a  force  is  not  itself  a  virtue.  Virtue  is  like 
wisdom.  A  library  can  change  owners;  wisdom 
cannot.  We  can  inherit  free  churches,  free  po* 
litical  institutions,  free  educational  institutions, 
vast  scientific  and  industrial  opportimities.  They 
are,  like  any  other  transferable  treasures,  ours 
to  use  for  good  or  for  ill.  But  we  cannot  inherit 
virtue,  reverence,  freedom,  wisdom,  inventive- 
ness, industry,  religion,  any  more  than  we  can 
inherit  sin  and  guilt.  We  are  heirs,  heirs  to  a 
fortune.  And  the  fortune  is  just  precisely  that 
which  we  naturally  mean  when  we  wish  for  a 
fortune,  namely,  agreeable  conditions  in  which 
to  develop  the  spirit  of  a  man. 

The  positive  element  in  this  fifth  law  is  more 
evident  than  in  the  other  nine  laws.  Its  fa- 
miliar wording  declares  that  a  man  must  wear 
in  his  soul  that  positive  dignity  of  an  heir, 
honor  towards  his  benefactor.  The  wholesome 
attitude,  indeed,  for  any  man  is  the  aristocratic 
one,  the  one  habitually  taken  by  the  well-bom. 
It  is  wrong,  it  is  stupid,  to  urge  a  disuse  of 
such  a  reasonable  pride.  The  wish  should 
rather  be  that  men  in  general  should  live  in  the 
truly  aristocratic  spirit.  Only  if  a  man  is  well- 
born can  there  be,  even  to  the  far-seeing  eye  of 
God,  a  place  for  the  force  of  honor.  Honor 
your  father  and  your  mother.     If  they  be  hon- 


THE  FIFTH  LAW  63 

orable ;  if  they  be  meritorious ;  if  even  there  be 
the  least  doubt  about  their  alleged  dishonor, — 
yes.  But  if  they  be  beneath  worth,  then  truth 
and  right  rob  a  son  of  his  privilege  of  giving 
honor.  A  son  whose  blood  is  sullied  by  parental 
indignity,  can  hardly  know  the  spontaneous, 
aristocratic  motive  in  his  heart.  But  yet  if  he 
will  discern  his  larger  but  equally  true  parent- 
age, nothing  can  keep  him  from  his  own;  and 
with  a  conscious  honor  eager  for  bestowal,  he 
will  carry  his  head  high  and  look  genially  into 
the  faces  of  men. 

There  is  a  "Noblesse  oblige"  quality  which  is 
demanded  of  a  man  because  he  is  a  man.  And 
that  is  what  this  law  is  about.  A  man  is  re- 
quired by  the  positive  will  of  the  Creator  to  live 
in  the  spirit  of  the  well-born.  And  a  man 
can  do  so  intelligently  and  honestly  if  he  will 
remember  the  natural  fact  of  his  spirit  parent- 
age. Thereby  he  may  enter  into  his  inheritance 
from  some  one  or  more  of  the  master-men 
amongst  his  fathers  in  the  past.  He  is  an  heir. 
He  is  well-born.  It  is  required  of  him  that  he 
accept  possession  of  genuine  aristocratic 
quality. 

No  other  meaning  can  attach  to  the  conten- 
tion that  a  man  should  esteem  himself  a  son  of 
God.  Such  sonship, — the  essence  of  the  Chris- 
tian momentum  which  has  advanced  the  world, 
— ^means  that  God,  working  through  men  and 


64         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

women,  our  natural  and  spiritual  parents,  pro- 
duced us.  It  means  also  that  there  is  a  positive 
pride,  a  propriety,  in  the  constant  exercise  of 
honor  because  of  our  birth.  We  are  sons  and 
heirs  of  God.  We  should  be,  we  must  be  aristo- 
cratic. 

How  naively  is  this  thought  confirmed  by  the 
estimate  of  the  parentage  of  Christ!  How  de- 
sirous men  were  to  point  out  his  blood  relation- 
ship to  distinguished  and  commanding  persons 
in  the  days  before  Him!  How  content  He  was 
to  call  Himself  the  Son  of  Man!  How  defin- 
itely He  declared  a  relationship,  filial  as  well  as 
fraternal,  between  Himself  and  others  devoted 
to  the  will  of  the  Supreme  One!  "Whosoever 
shall  do  the  will  of  My  Father  which  is  in 
heaven,  the  same  is  My  brother,  and  sister,  and 
mother."  And,  finally,  how  men  have  rested 
their  effort  to  describe  the  honor  within  Christ, 
the  aristocratic  quality  of  His  spirit,  by  calling 
Him  The  Son  of  God! 

Its  highest,  its  moral  reach  is  attained  by 
this  law  in  its  assertion  that  by  the  exercise  of 
tionor  toward  parents  men  create  social  stabil- 
ity. For  to  this  end  it  is  not  honor  merely 
which  is  required,  but  honor  of  the  best  sort.  It 
must  be  said  again  that  the  honor  demanded  of 
a  man  is  not  indiscriminate ;  it  is  to  be  paid  to 
our  parents  not  because  they  are  dead  and  gone, 
nor  yet  because  they  produced  us,  but  when  and 


THE  FIFTH  LAW  66 

because  they  are  meritorious.  And  further,  it 
is  to  be  had  in  mind  that  just  as  a  man  is  the 
child  of  his  own  works,  so  honor,  exercised  cor- 
rectly, begets  merit  in  the  man  who  exercises  it. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  social  stability  of  the  past 
lodged  in  the  people  of  merit.  It  always  lodges 
there.  Hence,  when  we  honor  our  parents 
aright  and  thereby  generate  merit  in  ourselves, 
then  it  is  that  we  make  stable — in  the  true  sense 
which  admits  of  improvement — the  society  of 
which  we  are  a  part. 

We  may  dwell  wisely  for  a  moment  upon  the 
truth  that  social  stability  was  and  is  the  off- 
spring of  merit.  That  community  will  live 
long  which  lives  not  upon  the  repute  of  its  in- 
herited name  merely,  but  upon  that  power, 
generative  of  social  stability,  which  gets  into 
operation  by  exercise  of  a  discriminating  honor. 
It  is  not  enough  to  be  content  with  the  fact 
that  we  are  heirs.  An  inheritance,  let  it  be 
said  again,  brings  no  guarantee  of  virtue. 
The  pride  which  is  native  to  the  heir  of  cir- 
cumstance and  repute,  may  miss  the  truly 
aristocratic  spirit  and  be  instead  a  mere  resting 
on  the  oars,  if  not  a  presumptuous  impudence. 
From  such  come  not  social  stability  but  social 
decay.  But  the  moral  element  in  this  law  whips 
men  up  to  such  discriminating  honor  toward 
their  honorable,  their  classic  parentage,  as 
makes  it  possible  for  the  stability  of  the  past  to 


66         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

be  repeated  and  improved  in  the  present.  In 
the  past  only  classic  people,  that  is,  people  of 
the  first  class,  or  rather,  only  people  with  clas- 
sic quality,  may  be  credited  with  transmitting 
social  stability  to  the  present.  It  was  the  clas- 
sic qualities  in  the  heart  and  the  mind  of  our 
father  and  mother  which  are  to  be  esteemed  and 
honored.  Other  qualities,  also  influential  it 
is  true,  have  hindered  and  continue  to  hinder 
the  quick  and  complete  development  of  society. 
To  these  other  qualities  we  owe  no  honor.  Our 
honor  is  demanded  of  us  as  the  due  of  those  men 
and  women  who  ordered  themselves  well  and 
worthily.  Their  classic  example,  their  parental 
influence,  their  social  efficiency,  are  about  us  all. 
And  the  burden  of  this  law  lies  upon  us  in  order 
that,  like  our  progenitors,  we  may  become  the 
honored  parents  of  a  social  future  that  shall 
abide.  Our  part  in  this  is  to  be  discriminate  in 
honor.  We  must  select  our  true  parentage. 
By  virtue  of  our  sacred  individuality,  we  stand 
under  bonds  to  choose  from  amongst  the  classic 
people  of  the  past  those  from  whom  we  shall 
consciously  inherit.  Thus  shall  we  in  part 
create  ourselves.  Thus  shall  we  import  into 
our  day  the  social  stability  of  earlier  days  and 
serve  as  a  force  enabling  our  people  to  live  long 
in  our  God-given  land. 

But  in  these  respects  we  need  be  full  of  care- 
fulness.    The  Chinese  nation  is  a  monument  of 


THE  FIFTH  LAW  67 

a  social  stability  of  one  sort ;  and  it  is  said  that 
the  virtue  of  the  Chinese  is  their  honoring  of 
parents.  Now,  in  our  instinctive  esteem,  this 
virtue  stands  so  high  that  some  men  have  won- 
dered if,  to  a  wise  judge,  Chinese  civilization 
equals  or  surpasses  the  Christian.  But  surely 
this  wonder  fails  to  see  the  Christian  effort  to 
obey  the  deeper  truth,  the  more  vital  element  in 
this  universal  law,  in  accord  with  which  Chris- 
tian peoples,  by  their  sort  of  honor-giving, 
create  a  civilization  which  improves.  The  Chi- 
nese honor  indiscriminately.  The  Christian 
honors  the  honorable,  the  first  class,  the  classic. 
The  Chinese  present  is  born  of  the  past  and  is 
exactly  like  the  past.  The  Christian  present 
is  born  of  the  classic  in  the  past,  and  is  ad- 
vancing toward  a  widespread  possession  of 
classic  qualities.  By  social  stability  the  Chi- 
nese mean,  so  we  have  been  led  to  understand, 
social  immobility.  The  Christian  meaning  is 
social  improvement.  Therefore  we  have  as  the 
opinion  of  one  wise  Christian,  "Better  fifty 
years  of  Europe  than  a  cycle  of  Cathay."  We 
want  to  live  long  in  the  land,  but  we  hope  that 
the  characteristic  of  our  stability  will  be  not 
its  length  of  time,  but  its  excellence  of  life. 

It  is  now,  the  quiet,  subconscious  working  of 
this  law, — which  like  all  real  laws,  is  written 
in  our  members, — ^that  has    turned    the    good 


68         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

sense  of  men  to-day  to  the  study  of  history. 
The  study  of  history,  the  method  and  the  de- 
gree of  that  study,  is,  probably,  a  correct  index 
of  a  civilization.  Where  the  past  is  idolized, 
there  is  no  history.  And  where  there  is  no  his- 
tory, where  there  is  no  squaring  of  the  present 
to  the  classic  standard,  there  can  be,  of  course, 
no  production  of  a  higher  classic,  and  therefore 
no  progress.  On  the  other  hand,  where  there  is 
an  exercised  instinct  for  history,  that  is,  where 
there  is  an  ambition  to  excel,  and  where  the  past 
is  neither  idolized  nor  forgotten  but  is  honored, 
— there,  the  noblest  abilities  of  men,  in  politics, 
in  thought,  in  art,  in  religion,  have  a  chance  to 
exercise  parental  influence,  helping  its  posses- 
sors to  second  birth  and  to  most  prosperous  pro- 
creation. 

And  so,  finally,  when  it  is  remembered  that 
the  most  influential  classic  is  the  classic  person- 
ality, the  classic  human  life;  when  it  is  remem- 
bered that  the  instinct  for  history  is  the  sure 
and  sensible  path  to  an  association  with  the 
classic  man,  Christ ;  when  it  is  remembered  that 
to  be  born  of  Christ  is  to  be  bom  of  God  and  to 
be  therefore  a  spiritual  man; — ^then  it  appears 
reasonable  and  wise  to  consent  gladly  to.  the 
highest  operations  of  this  law.  All  laws  have 
in  them  hints  of  danger.  This  law  works  upon 
our  taste  for  riches ;  and  there  is  danger  there. 
It  appeals  to  our  instinctive  desire  for  aristo- 


THE  FIFTH  LAW  69 

cratic  privilege;  and  there  is  danger  there.  It 
directs  us  to  a  delight  in  history,  to  a  pleasure 
in  the  accomplishments  of  men;  and  there  is  a 
danger  even  there.  But  all  this  is  to  assure  us 
of  our  parentage  in  both  the  classic  Christ  and 
in  all  the  God-filled  people  of  the  days  that  are 
gone:  it  is  to  show  us  the  divineness  of  our 
pedigree,  to  the  end  that  by  honoring  our  fa- 
thers and  mothers  who  are  honorable,  we  may 
generate  in  ourselves  a  classic  sonship  and  trans- 
mit to  our  posterity,  long  established  in  our 
land,  the  qualities  of  classic  men  and  women. 


THE  SIXTH  LAW 

MAN  AS  SAVIOR 

Thou   shalt   do   no  murder. 

Thou   shalt  save  life. 


THE   SIXTH  LAW 

Jesus  Christ  could  not  have  been  the  Savior 
of  mankind  unless  there  be  in  man,  as  part  of 
his  composition,  a  savior's  nature.  The  differ- 
ence between  Jesus  and  other  men  is  in  his  ful- 
filled saving  ability:  we  know  by  daily  experi- 
ence that  he  and  not  another  saves  us.  But  we 
know,  also,  that  the  secret  of  his  ability  lodges 
in  the  manhood  which  we  share  with  him.  No 
other  man  possesses  that  particular  commission 
which  he  received  of  God — the  commission  to  be 
savior  to  the  whole  human  race ;  but  every  man, 
in  being  saved  by  Jesus  Christ,  in  being  ruled 
by  his  influence,  finds  that  his  own  savior-nature 
gets  quickened  into  life  within  him,  and  that  he 
himself  begins  to  realize  a  responsibility  for 
the  humanhood  of  each  member  of  the  human 
race  with  whom  he  has  to  do.  For  the  fact  is, 
we  all  are  saviors,  preservers.  It  is  a  fact  of 
human  nature.  It  is  the  fact  which  made  pos- 
sible the  Savior  of  our  race. 

And  this  fact  is  really  a  familiar  one.  Its 
force  is  well  recognized  in  the  beaten  paths  of 
experience.  Consider  the  much  remarked  incli- 
nation of  men  to  obey  whatever  appears  to  have 
authority.  For  authority,  so  long  as  it  is  un- 
criticised,  stands  as  the  exponent  of  the  true 
and  right,  and  to  these,  the  saving  forces  of 

73 


74         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

life,  our  obedience  is  given.  We  obey  author- 
ity so  that  while  it  saves  us  it  may  with  our 
help  save  others  also.  Then,  too,  we  yield  our- 
selves instinctively  to  the  conditions  or  circum- 
stances in  which  we  happen  to  be;  we  become, 
instinctively,  supporters  of  our  environment. 
And  this  expresses  the  fact  that  we  are  conser- 
vators by  nature.  We  are  predisposed  to  pre- 
serve things  as  they  are,  and  to  hold  hard  to 
the  conviction  that  whatever  is,  so  long  as  it 
is  part  of  our  make  up,  has  a  right  to  be.  That 
is,  admittedly,  where  a  man  begins.  Culture 
alone  rebels.  Instinct  bids  him  support,  obey, 
save  that  which  he  finds  enthroned. 

Take  it  in  opinions.  We  greedily  conserve 
what  we  heard  in  the  beginning.  To  correct  an 
opinion  is  to  suffer  from  growing  pains.  Take 
it  in  taste.  The  standards  of  taste,  whether 
they  be  good  or  bad,  are  in  general  almost  sta- 
tionary. It  is  proverbially  true,  also,  in  cus- 
toms, many  of  which  live  so  long  as  to  grow 
stale.  If  we  consider  the  peoples  of  the  earth, 
it  is  very  few  who  have  rebelled  against  the 
conditions  and  standards  under  which  they 
found  themselves.  The  few  indeed  have  re- 
belled. Culture  has  lighted  up  this  group  of 
individuals  or  that  small  commonwealth  and 
then,  by  the  power  of  rebellion,  their  savior  in- 
stinct has  received  a  new  field,  a  wider  field,  in 
which  to  operate,  one  too  in  which  to  conserve 
new  instincts. 


THE  SIXTH  LAW  76 

By  nature,  then,  man  is  a  savior.  Because  he 
is  a  savior  he  can  be  saved  by  his  brother,  for 
otherwise  his  brother  could  not  be  a  savior. 
And  when  a  man  is  saved  he  is  lifted  into  a  de- 
veloped ability  to  be  more  true  to  himself  and 
to  assume  a  new  measure  of  savior  duties  as  his 
own.  This  is  the  basal  reason  for  the  law 
"Thou  shalt  not  murder."  Its  other  wording 
is  "Thou  shalt  be  a  savior." 

But  when  applied  to  social  experiences,  this 
law  seems  fated  to  carry  a  dangerous  error. 
For  it  is  most  common  to  restrict  the  meaning 
of  murder  to  the  loss  of  visible  existence.  Mur- 
der as  a  disposition  of  our  spirit,  however,  has 
but  little  to  do  with  loss  of  existence.  To  de- 
prive a  man  of  existence  may  be  wrong  or  it 
may  be  right.  To  deprive  him  of  life,  to  di- 
minish or  degrade  his  quality,  is  always  wrong! 
Indeed,  because  of  the  over-esteem  of  mere  ex- 
istence, the  scope  of  murder,  the  facility  with 
which  a  man  may  develop  within  himself  a  mur- 
derer's quality,  is  little  seen,  and  men  and 
women  who  talk  with  tearful  eyes  and  bleeding 
hearts  about  untimely  or  violent  death,  may  be 
themselves  the  very  microbes  of  the  spirit  of 
murder.  Untimely  or  violent  death  may  not  be 
murder.  Killing  may  not  be  murder.  If  it  were, 
who  shall  say  that  the  God  who  has  made  death 
universal,  is  not  revealed  thereby  as  a  murder- 
ous Spirit.? 


76         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

Murder  is,  in  short,  a  moral  matter,  not  a 
physical.  This  law  is  a  moral  law,  a  law  of  the 
spirit.  It  is  not  a  physical  law  nor  is  it  con- 
cerned merely  with  temporal  residence  on  the 
earth.  The  subject  of  this  law  about  murder  is 
not  the  existence  of  men  but  the  life  of  men. 

It  is  often  noted  that  men  generally  can  see 
existence  but  are  blind  to  life.  Existence  is 
the  visible  thing;  life  the  invisible.  Existence 
is  the  walls  and  materials  of  the  house.  Life  is 
the  associations,  the  honor,  the  personal  quality 
which  dwell  in  the  house.  And  because  of  over- 
emphasis of  the  one  at  the  expense  of  the  other, 
there  is  upon  the  subject  of  murder  general 
confusion. 

For  instance,  war  is  not  usually  discussed 
sanely.  Whether  the  talk  be  for  war  or  against 
it,  the  issue  which,  if  murder  has  anything  to 
do  with  it,  is  life  and  not  temporal  existence, 
is  almost  never  brought  clearly  into  light.  If, 
however,  it  be  true  that  murder  is  concerned 
with  life  rather  than  with  existence,  it  is  forci- 
bly conceivable  that  a  nation  might  easily  be 
guilty  of  the  most  iniquitous  murder  simply  by 
refusing  to  engage  in  some  specific  war. 

It  is  the  same  in  talk  about  capital  punish- 
ment. Sentiment  bred  upon  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury virtue,  pity,  has  befogged  the  wits  of  men, 
until  the  sovereign  people  are  afraid  to  put  a 
man  to  judicial  death  because  the  undiscrimin- 


THE  SIXTH  LAW  77 

ating  public  tongue  links  repugnant  murder 
even  to  judicial  death.  "If  the  criminal  is 
dead  there  is  no  hope  for  him"  cries  the  pitying 
reformer.  Why  not?  Is  he  not  as  immortal 
as  ever?  Has  he  not  just  as  actual  a  life  as 
ever?  Exclude  immortality,  and  then  his  death 
is  a  matter  of  least  importance.  Include  im- 
mortality, and  then  his  existence  and  his  death 
alike  are  incidents  entirely  subordinate  to  jus- 
tice. The  one  judicial  question  is — has  he  be- 
haved so  that  the  life  and,  in  this  case,  the  ex- 
istence also  of  society  have  been  struck  at  with 
fatal  purpose  and  result?  At  that  point,  jus- 
tice, the  real  governor  of  society,  calls  some- 
times for  the  removal  of  the  man  beyond  so- 
ciety's limits.  And  only  death  can  do  that. 
Dreadful  as  is  the  duty  of  inflicting  death,  jus- 
tice, which  is  one  name  of  God,  may  require 
men  in  society  to  assume  and  execute  it. — And 
the  effort  to  save  a  criminal  from  deserved  ju- 
dicial death,  may  easily  make  the  consenting 
community  so  complacently  murderous  as  to 
endanger  both  its  own  dignity,  honor,  and 
stem  purity  which  are  its  life,  and  also  the  tem- 
poral existence  of  many  of  its  better  members, 
the  murderers'  victims. 

Likewise  of  lynchings,  while  there  is  no  jus- 
tification of  them  there  is  this  extenuation. 
They  proceed  from  the  quickening  within  the 
community  of  that  natural  fact  on  which  the 


78         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

law  about  murder  is  based.  "Thou  shalt  do  no 
murder"  or  "Thou  shalt  be  a  savior  of  life"  is 
the  law.  And  the  same  community  which  one 
day  talks  with  fervor  about  the  wickedness  of 
war  and  of  judicial  executions,  the  next  day 
with  frenzy  and  often  with  unspeakable  bru- 
tality, takes  a  man  identified  in  their  excited 
mind  with  one  who  has  struck  a  mortal  blow  at 
their  honor,  and  kills  him.  The  illegality  of 
the  act  admits  of  no  justification  whatever. 
But  the  cure  of  their  perverted  social  behavior 
cannot  be  had  until  justice  is  executed  in  ac- 
cord with  the  reality,  not  the  sentiment,  of  the 
law  about  murder. 

In  reality  the  sixth  law  is  concerned  with  life 
and  not  with  existence  merely.  It  is  not  con- 
cerned with  length  of  days  merely.  It  is  con- 
cerned with  quality,  with  virtue,  with  dignity, 
with  honor.  These  it  is,  which  justice,  which 
the  military,  which,  indeed,  the  very  physical 
forces  of  the  earth,  strive  under  God's  direc- 
tion to  protect  and  develop.  To  maintain  these, 
war  may  be  necessary,  judicial  death  may  be 
necessary.  And  this  price,  though  it  be  one  of 
blood,  is  none  too  high  to  pay  for  any  digni- 
fying of  the  lives  of  men. 

Once  again  then,  man  is  by  natural  composi- 
tion a  savior.  By  moral  requirement  that 
which  is  to  be  saved  is  life,  a  thing  of  quality, 
a  thing  full  of  comparisons.     And  by  positive 


THE  SIXTH  LAW  79 

necessity  a  man,  in  order  to  escape  the  guilt  of 
murder,  must  apply  his  savior  will  to  the  en- 
tire field  of  his  personal  endeavors.  For  the 
saving  of  life  is  not  a  dramatic  incident:  it  is 
a  continuous  process. 

Take,  for  example,  the  field  of  temperament 
or  disposition.  The  law  here  brings  out  a 
sharpest  issue  between  a  fulfilling,  a  perfecting 
inclination  and  a  scornful,  a  contemptuous,  a 
destructive  inclination.  A  man  is  constantly 
meeting  oppositions.  Every  task,  every  service 
which  we  are  called  upon  to  do  is,  in  fact,  a 
form  of  opposition  to  our  will.  To  adopt 
toward  any  opposition  an  undiscriminating 
contempt  and  scorn,  is  simply  to  train  the  spirit 
in  murder.  A  thousand  forces  oppose  our  own 
— which  we  call  our  good-will.  What  is  the  law 
under  which  our  life-quality  in  the  presence 
of  opposition  is  governed?  Or,  to  put  it  dif- 
ferently, toward  any  opposition,  excepting  al- 
ways unqualified  evil  if  there  be  such,  how  must 
a  man  behave  in  order  to  do  a  man's  work  and 
at  the  same  time  grow  in  virtue?  "I  came  to 
fulfil,  not  to  destroy"  was  the  disposition  of 
Christ.  To  educe  the  good  from  both  the  op- 
posing sides, — that  is  the  requirement  of  this 
Christian  law.  But  the  traditional  habit  of 
men  spiritually  undisciplined,  is  destruction, 
wanton  destruction.  Toward  any  opposition, 
— ^in  peace,  in  instruction,  in  play,  in  war, — 


80         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

destruction  is  the  undisciplined  disposition  of 
the  spirit.  We  see  it  often  in  the  petty  tyr- 
annies of  parents  and  teachers.  We  see  it  in 
the  wanton  destruction  of  wild  game  and  of  the 
forests.  We  see  it  in  the  abuse  of  privileges. 
We  see  it  in  the  disputes  of  men.  In  labor  con- 
flicts, for  example,  the  dignity  and  efficiency, 
often  the  existence  of  commerce  are  threatened. 
Also  in  the  intricacies  of  friendship,  especially 
under  domestic  conditions,  scorn  and  contempt 
constantly  display  in  divorce  courts  a  ruin  of 
the  capacity  for  friendship  itself. 

Take,  again,  the  field  of  opinion.  A  man 
must  endeavor  in  this  field  to  be  a  savior  of  life. 
And  the  common  issue  here  is  between  a  utility 
which  makes  existence  easy,  and  an  idealty 
which  makes  life  choice.  "Sell  the  ointment 
and  give  the  proceeds  to  the  poor  so  that  the 
poor  may  have  another  day  of  existence.  To 
anoint  a  kingly  man  with  costly  although  sym- 
bolic ointment  is  a  waste."  The  man  who  said 
that  first  was  already  in  his  heart  a  murderer. 
And  it  is  a  commonest  temptation  to  approve  of 
small  utilities  and  be  at  pains  to  secure  them 
even  at  the  deliberate  expense  of  courtesies  and 
sanctities.  Many  men  have  pride  in  an  undis- 
criminating  neglect  of  social  courtesies.  They 
style  themselves  unconventional.  They  are  in 
fact  and  by  the  bondage  of  habit,  uncon- 
sciously   contemptuous    of    the    grace  of  life. 


THE  SIXTH  LAW  81 

They  are  the  destroyers  of  life's  graces.  They 
are  breakers  of  the  law.  They  say,  "I  have 
more  pressing  business."  They  mean,  existence 
is  worthier  than  life. 

How  many  men  spend  time  and  money  and 
thought  and  discipline  in  effort  to  sanctify  the 
day's  experience?  We  talk  much  about  the 
day's  work.  It  is  time  to  talk  more  about  the 
day's  sanctification.  To  make  home  gracious; 
to  make  work  service;  to  make  associations  sa- 
cred, these  are  the  real  business  of  life.  But 
many  men  are  dazed  by  such  words  as  sacred- 
ness  and  sanctity.  Their  wits  have  been  be- 
fogged by  a  love  for  the  utilities  of  existence. 

In  these  familiar  and  innocent  looking  fields 
men  harvest  a  murderous  quality.  For  life,  far 
more  than  existence,  is  very  precarious.  Gra- 
ciousness,  highmindedness,  reverence,  honor, 
courage,  have  a  way  of  gasping  and  dying  at 
the  very  moment  when  existence  seems  most  fat 
and  well  liking.  And  it  is  far  easier  to  be  a 
murderer,  to  have  a  murderer's  heart  and  taste 
and  habit,  than  it  is  to  bear  about  in  the  body 
the  spirit  of  a  savior  of  life. 

There  is  a  familiar  way  of  thinking  ^bout 
the  power  of  Christ  which  helps  a  man  to  be  a 
murderer  before  he  knows  it.  Christ  being  now 
identified  with  the  power  behind  the  visible 
world  is  thought  to  be  saying  to  men,  "Be 
good  or  I  will  kill  you.      Once    you    had   the 


82         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

power  to  kill  me.  But  now  I  have  the  power  to 
kill  you."  Against  that  thought  men  instinc- 
tively and  properly  rebel.  Unhappily,  how- 
ever, counting  this  threat  a  true  index  of  Christ, 
they  refuse  to  follow  Christ;  they  shut  the 
Savior  out  of  their  minds ;  and,  therefore,  they 
impair  their  own  quality  and  their  effect  upon 
the  public  life.  But  the  truth  to-day  is  exactly 
as  it  was  before.  Christ  says  always  to  men, 
"Be  good,  be  Christian,  or  you  will  kill  me." 
Unless  men  are  saviors,  saviors  of  life,  in  their 
own  souls  and  in  their  influence,  they  must  kiU 
out  the  ennobling  Christliness  which  is  the  only 
salt  and  savor  of  their  own  manhood  as  it  is  of 
our  Christian  civilization.  It  is  the  crucifying 
of  the  Son  of  God  afresh  which  is  the  social 
danger.  Where  that  murderous  will  is,  there  is 
degeneracy  in  life, — a  shrinkage  in  liberty,  in 
endeavor,  in  culture,  in  character. 

But  who  is  the  guilty  one?  We  say  without 
hesitation  that  others  besides  Czolgosz  were 
guilty  of  President  McKinley's  murderous 
death.  We  say,  having  forgotten  the  Roman 
soldiery,  that  Christ  died  at  the  hands  of  his 
own  murderous  brethren  not  one  of  whom 
touched  a  hammer  or  a  nail.  For  it  is  from  re- 
mote causes  that  murderous  crime  has  its  start. 
As  you  follow  backward  the  path  of  influences 
you  see  all  alongside  the  way,  the  ruin  of  some 
of  the  graces  of  life,  the  work  of  wanton,  scorn- 


THE  SIXTH  LAW  83 

ful  destruction.  Finally  you  reach  the  heart 
and  mind  of  a  man  or  a  woman  presumably  re- 
spectable, who  secretly  defied  this  sixth  of  the 
laws  of  God.  He  or  she  defied  it  and  under 
that  influence  life  began  to  sicken,  although  it 
appeared  then  prosperous  and  ruddy.  No  one 
decides  deliberately  to  grow  up  to  be  a  cutter 
of  a  neighbor's  throat.  But  unless  a  man  obeys 
this  law  in  its  positive  and  moral  sense,  he  is 
likely  to  be  far  more  guilty.  "Thou  shalt  be  a 
savior  of  the  life  of  men"  is  the  law.  And  only 
by  walking  in  its  spirit  can  we  keep  our  hand 
guiltless  both  of  our  neighbor's  blood  and  of 
that  nail  and  cross  which  kill  the  Christ  who  is 
within  every  man  born  into  the  world. 


THE  SEVENTH  LAW 
MAN  AS  PRIEST 
Thou   shalt   not   commit  adultery. 
Thou  shalt  sanctify  thy  experiences. 


THE   SEVENTH   LAW 

The  fact  in  man's  nature  which  is  foundation 
for  this  law  is  that  man  is  a  priest.  Analyze 
the  nature  of  a  man,  and  he  is  seen  to  be 
amongst  other  things,  a  sanctifier,  a  beautifier,  a 
transfigurer,  a  discoverer  and  declarer  of  clean- 
ness and  holiness.  He  is  a  priest,  and  the 
seventh  law  bids  him  be  in  practice  that  which 
he  is  in  constitution. 

The  business  of  a  professional  priest  is  to  di- 
rect attention  to  the  holy,  the  godly  qualities 
in  the  common  experiences  of  men. 

A  priest  speaks  professionally, — and  the 
thing  he  is  trying  to  do  is  to  utter  not  his  own 
words  but  the  sanctifying  word  of  God. 

A  priest  baptizes,  and  thereby  tries  to  sanc- 
tify birth;  he  lifts  the  minds  of  those  who  are 
willing,  up  above  the  low  esteem  whereby  the 
birth  of  a  man  is  not  distinguished  from  the 
birth  of  four-footed  beasts  and  creeping  things, 
up  even  to  the  thought  that  the  faithful  men 
and  women  of  all  the  ages,  those  who  have  been 
true  not  to  themselves  first  of  all  but  to  the  Per- 
fect Man, — are  the  parental  source  of  healthy 
character.  It  is  true  that  we  are  bom  of  God 
by  nature.  So  is  a  shark,  and  a  bat,  and  a 
viper.  And  it  is  in  our  power  to  be  indiscrim- 
inate, indefinite  and  confused  in  all  our  thought 

87 


88         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

about  birth,  about  nature,  and  about  God.  In 
baptism  a  priest  directs  our  thought  to  the 
truth  that  godly  character  must  be  brought  to 
birth  in  us  by  the  influence  of  the  godly  people 
who  have  been  in  the  world.  The  Creator  has 
provided  us  a  spiritual  parentage  (in  which  our 
natural  father  and  mother  may  or  may  not  be 
included).  This  provision  permits  us  to  believe 
and  behave  about  birth  as  though,  in  the  very 
first  moment  of  life  and  by  means  of  his  agents, 
God  brought  to  birth  an  heir  to  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  By  such  faith  only  is  birth  a  holy 
event.  And  up  to  this  esteem  of  the  children 
born  to  us,  the  professional  priest,  using  a 
symbol  as  an  instrument,  tries  to  lift  our  minds. 
Likewise  in  marriage,  the  professional  priest 
expressing  the  priestliness  of  human  nature, 
lifts  up  our  minds.  The  esteem  of  marriage 
can  be  kept  low  with  dangerous  ease.  To  many 
people,  it  appears  to  be  merely  an  interesting 
and  convenient  experiment.  Many  secretly  es- 
teem it  only  a  way  to  secure  the  comforts  and 
advantages  of  a  homestead  at  the  lowest  price 
in  liberty  or  in  money.  Such  esteem  is  the  root 
of  divorce.  Such  esteem  is  also  the  root  of  the 
disinclination  of  many  to  marry  at  all.  If  mar- 
riage means  that;  if  that  is  the  explanation  of 
the  strange  fact  of  sex;  if  fatherhood  and 
motherhood  are  but  incidents  in  a  scheme  of 
domestic  economy,  who  then  would  risk  his  soul 


THE  SEVENTH  LAW  89 

in  the  intricacies  and  intimacies  of  marriage? 
If  the  choice  lie  between  virtue  such  as  thus  im- 
plied, and  vice, — vice  seems  more  virtuous.  But 
the  priest's  function  is  to  solemnize  and  bless  a 
marriage.  He  discloses  to  the  reverent  mind  a 
holy  friendship,  such  friendship  as  exists  be- 
tween the  spirit  of  Christ,  the  perfect  man,  and 
the  spirits  of  people  who  are  trying  to  be  good. 

In  all  the  cases  where  a  professional  priest 
tries  to  serve  a  man  the  purpose  is  the  same. 
He  points  out  and  emphasizes  that  which  al- 
ready exists  but  which  needs  loudest  and  re- 
peated mention, — ^the  sanctifying,  beautifying 
elements  in  our  experiences.  The  priest  does 
not  bring  the  child  to  birth ;  the  priest  does  not 
make  the  marriage;  he  is  not  even  required  to 
legalize  a  marriage.  But  he  solemnizes  these 
experiences.  He  indicates  the  sanctifying  ele- 
ments. He  points  to  the  presence  of  a  holy 
God  and  to  that  estimate  of  men's  experiences 
held  by  Jesus  Christ.  The  professional  priest 
is,  indeed,  only  the  specialized  expression  of 
what  man  naturally  is.  Man,  because  he  is 
man,  is  a  priest.  He  is  a  sanctifier,  a  beautifier 
of  whatever  he  deals  with.  And  to  be  true  to 
his  nature  he  must  estimate  his  experiences  not 
from  below,  but  from  the  plane  of  holiness  and 
cleanness  on  which  the  Creator  has  decreed  that 
a  man  should  stand. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  a  man  be- 


90         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

cause  he  is  constructed  by  nature  to  be  a  priest, 
behaves  therefore  in  a  priestly  way.  He  has 
the  power  to  sanctify  his  experiences,  but  it 
does  not  follow  that  he  uses  it.  The  owner  of 
tools  may  be  a  wretched  mechanic.  The  owner 
of  books  may  be  a  wretched  student.  A  man 
can  be  endowed  with  a  large  brain  and  yet  never 
do  a  day's  serious  thinking.  He  can  possess 
the  power  to  sanctify  his  whole  lifetime  and  yet, 
— ^the  pity  of  it, — defile  every  relationship  into 
which  he  enters.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  easy  habit  of 
men  and  women  to  be  content  to  be  adulterous ; 
to  taint  and  stain  and  discolor  all  the  choice 
opportunites  which  life  affords  by  serving  more 
than  one  master  and  attaining,  therefore,  only 
a  corrupt,  an  impure  fidelity. 

Adulterous  sin  is  in  popular  thought  confined 
to  the  relationship  of  marriage.  The  civil  law 
has  made,  in  terms  of  marriage  relationship,  a 
technical  definition  of  adultery.  And  as  it  so 
often  happens  with  technical  definitions  of 
large-meaning  ideas,  the  small,  the  narrow  sig- 
nification abides  in  the  popular  mind,  and  men 
and  women  lured  into  complacency  toward  the 
larger  truth,  are  hurt  by  the  very  effort  to  do 
them  good.  In  the  culture  of  the  spirit,  adul- 
tery has  no  such  narrow  meaning.  The  men 
and  women  who,  hearing  this  seventh  law  of  the 
spiritual  life,  are  conscience-easy  because  of  the 
physical  integrity  of  their  sexual  relationships, 


THE  SEVENTH  LAW  91 

are  still  in  spiritual  babyhood.  The  Church 
gives  a  larger  than  the  popular  meaning  to  this 
law,  saying  in  its  much  overlooked  instruction, 
that  it  means  temperance,  soberness,  and  chas- 
tity. But  wider  still  is  the  meaning  given  by 
Christ,  by  the  Scriptures,  and  by  common  sense. 
These  make  adultery  apply  to  all  human  ex- 
perience, and  make  it  mean  every  violation  of 
faithful  adhesion  to  either  God  or  man. 

"With  their  idols  they  committed  adultery," 
said  Ezekiel.  That  is,  they  made  love  to  War, 
or  Plenty,  or  Prosperity,  or  Pleasure.  "They 
have  sworn  by  them  that  are  no  gods ;  then  did 
they,"  said  Isaiah,  "commit  adultery."  That 
is, — so  says  this  father  of  the  Church, — ^that 
man  is  adulterous  who  dallies  with  gods  other 
than  the  Eternal  Righteousness.  And  Jesus 
Christ,  using  the  same  wide  meaning,  said  that 
the  so-called  best  people  of  his  time  were  "A 
wicked  and  adulterous  generation."  What  is 
this  wider,  this  human  meaning  except  that  if 
we  will  not  be  the  priests  that  we  are  made  to 
be,  if  we  will  not  inject  the  priestly  influence 
into  human  society,  we  are  in  the  judgment  of 
God  and  of  common  sense,  in  precisely  the  same 
class  as  the  brazen  and  unrepentant  harlot  .f* 
The  sexual  fidelity  of  husband  and  wife  is  not 
the  only  fidelity  there  is.  No  personal  associa- 
tions are  possible  without  fidelity;  and  over  all 
is  the  supreme  fidelity  due  to  the  One,  the  Eter- 


92         THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

nal  God.  To  swerve  in  this  is  to  cultivate  an 
adulterous  spirit.  To  be  sexually  pure  is  to 
attain,  let  us  say,  the  alphabet  of  purity, — it 
is  an  essential  purity,  of  course;  but  it  is  not, 
as  some  zealous  language  seems  to  imply,  the 
climax  of  purity.  On  the  other  hand,  to  de- 
base and  belittle  and  violate  the  faith  that 
moves  any  of  the  enterprises  of  men,  is  to  be 
adulterous.  And  a  whole  community,  a  com- 
monwealth, a  church,  as  well  as  any  wretched 
pair  of  mortals,  can  become  foul  with  this  in- 
fectious iniquity. 

If  the  merchants  of  a  community  are  con- 
tent to  adulterate  their  goods;  if  the  schools 
and  churches  of  a  nation  are  content  to  adul- 
terate their  teachings  and  preachings,  to  let  the 
smooth  and  profitable  displace  the  true  and 
right;  if  the  public  press  and  the  public  thea- 
tre violate  their  unwritten  contract  to  benefit 
the  community  by  faithful  effort;  if  they  ap- 
peal to  and  nourish  the  meaner,  the  baser  im- 
pulses, prejudices,  ignorances,  and  passions;  if, 
finally,  the  community,  led  by  its  own  accepted 
leaders,  wanders  indifferently  away  from  God, 
from  the  true  God,  and  sets  up  its  idols  in  its 
heart, — why  then  fidelity  is  being  daily  vio- 
lated, purity  is  being  habitually  outraged,  and 
an  adulterous  quality  becomes  the  almost  com- 
mon condition,  the  almost  common  destiny. 

We  wonder  how  the  family  as  an  institution 


THE  SEVENTH  LAW  93 

can  possibly  lose  its  dignity!  We  wonder  how 
people  can  hold  loose  and  vulgar  opinions  of 
any  of  the  circumstances  involved  in  father- 
hood, brotherhood,  childhood, — those  human 
relationships  which  can  be  so  infinitely  precious 
and  satisfying!  It  can  happen  because  fidelity 
in  one  field  of  human  activity  supports  fidelity 
in  other  fields ;  and  infidelity  supports  other  in- 
fidelity. It  can  happen  because  the  infidelities 
of  men  in  any  of  the  fields  of  activity,  work  out 
into  bad  effects  upon  the  character  of  men  and 
women.  Indeed  all  the  manifold  activities  in 
which  men  may  exercise  but  so  often  fail  to  ex- 
ercise fidelity  to  God  and  man,  seem  to  collect 
the  power  of  their  infidelities  and  treasons  to- 
gether and  send  it  in  concentrated  hostility 
against  men's  households  and  men's  souls.  For 
the  whole  of  the  world  is  God's  world.  The 
first  allegiance  is  due  to  him  who  by  God's  grace 
is  king  of  men,  the  perfect  man,  the  Savior, 
Jesus  Christ.  To  him,  commerce,  education, 
religion,  the  public  press,  the  public  theatre 
owe  fidelity.  Whoever  loves  any  of  these  things 
more  than  he  loves  Christ  the  King,  is  adulter- 
ous, is  unfaithful,  is  foul.  The  perfect  man  is 
the  first  object  of  fidelity.  And  whoever  is  un- 
faithful to  the  perfect  man,  is  a  force  making 
for  the  spread  of  family  ruin  and  individual 
indecency  and  libertinism  somewhere  in  the 
world. 


94  THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

Man  is  a  priest.  That  is  the  first  thing  im- 
plied by  the  seventh  law.  The  second  thing  is 
the  positive  injunction  to  fulfil  practically  that 
which  we  are  constitutionally.  Our  function  is 
to  exercise  a  priestly  influence,  to  maintain  a 
priestly  standard  in  the  public  and  private  re- 
lationships into  which  we  enter.  There  is  no 
place  for  adulteration.  There  is  no  place  for 
idolatry,  nor  for  self-worship.  There  is  no 
place  for  infidelity  and  impurity.  Because  we 
are  human  we  are  called  not  to  uncleanness  but 
to  holiness. 

To  this  esteem  of  himself  and  of  all  persons, 
to  this  way  of  dealing  with  others,  every  one  is 
called.  A  man  is  intended  to  be  a  holy  crea- 
ture. We  are  assigned  to  priestly  responsibil- 
ity because  our  human  nature  is  brought  to 
fruition  and  maturity  only  when  it  is  treated  in 
a  holy  way.  The  seventh  law  calls  men  into 
this  way  of  living.  It  does  not  name  a  tech- 
nical act  of  misconduct  possible  only  to  peo- 
ple who  happen  to  be  married  and  say,  "The 
path  which  the  human  spirit  must  take  to  enter 
into  life  lies  counter  to  this  physical  incorrect- 
ness." We  ourselves  read  into  this  law  a  tech- 
nical significance.  And  we  do  so  because  we 
are  so  much  under  the  influence  of  the  man- 
made  civil  law.  The  law  of  the  spirit,  however, 
is  no  more  man-made  than  is  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation.    It  speaks,  then,  not  as  does  the  civil 


THE  SEVENTH  LAW  96 

law  of  a  technical  act,  but  it  says,  "A  man,  a 
woman,  a  nation  must,  in  all  their  experiences, 
treat  themselves  and  all  persons  in  the  priestly 
way  because  that  is  the  one  way  to  bring  out 
the  spiritual  vigor,  the  virtue,  the  beauty,  the 
holiness  which  are  in  whatever  a  man  has  to  do 
and  in  whatever  relationships  he  enters. 

Thou  shalt  be  a  priest.  Thou  shalt  not  be 
adulterous.  Thou  shalt  not  prostitute  thy 
character  or  thy  abilities.  Thou  shalt  not  de- 
grade nor  debase  nor  stultify  the  human  rela- 
tionships in  which  thou  bearest  a  part ;  for  any 
such  behavior  is  unclean  and  makes  a  human  life 
deficient  in  integrity  and  justice  and  gracious- 
ness.  Thou  shalt  be  priestly  and  shalt  seek  and 
see  and  declare  whatsoever  things  are  true, 
whatsoever  things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things 
are  just,  whatsoever  things  are  pure,  whatso- 
ever things  are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of 
good  report;  if  there  be  any  virtue,  if  there  be 
any  praise,  thou  shalt  think  of  these  things.  It 
is  these  things  which  compose  a  sanctified  expe- 
rience. And  with  these  things  men  and  women 
are  fundamentally  and  permanently  concerned. 
These  things  quicken  and  beautify  human  life. 
To  them  a  man  is  called  because  he  is  a  priest 
and  because  his  manhood  depends  upon  the 
priestliness  of  his  daily  practices. 

Now,  however,  when  so  many  of  us  help  the 
bad  cause  on,  is  it  any  wonder  that  the  Ameri- 
can home,  the  American  family  is  to-day  endan- 


96  THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

gered?  We  help  the  bad  cause  on  by  the  only 
force  which  helps  on  any  cause, — our  perverted 
faith.  Our  perversion  in  faith  to-day  is  so  com- 
prehensive as  to  be,  under  many  lights,  indis- 
criminate, unclean,  diseased,  adulterous.  There 
can  be  no  reasonable  wonder  that  alcoholic  in- 
temperance and  sexual  indecency  gain  year  by 
year  a  growing  number  of  self-excusing  dis- 
ciples, because  the  faith  of  the  public  as  a  public 
is  already  to  some  degree  adulterous.  Corrupt 
faith,  the  general  as  well  as  the  individual  faith, 
is  a  cause.  Conduct  is  the  effect.  Children  are 
the  victims.  Fathers,  mothers,  guardians,  and 
sponsors  are  the  sinners.  An  adulterous  faith, 
a  faith  that  is  blind  to  the  priestly  nature  of  a 
man  or  a  nation,  is  fatal.  It  spreads  death 
upon  the  earth.  It  kills  society.  It  rots  the 
bonds  of  family,  and  makes  men  false  to  their 
neighbor  and  their  God. 

And  against  such  false  faith  the  law,  thun- 
dering from  Sinai,  is  echoed  by  the  immaculate 
Christ — Thou  shalt  not,  thou  canst  not  be  adul- 
terous and  at  the  same  time  attain  the  life  that 
appertaineth  to  a  man.  Thou  shalt  hallow  thy 
experiences,  for  man  is  a  priest  ordained  by 
God.  Man  is  called  to  holiness.  And  life 
awaits  a  man,  life  awaits  human  society,  only 
on  the  terms  on  which  it  awaits  every  other  crea- 
ture,— obedience  to  the  laws  of  the  nature  (in 
man's  case  a  priestly  nature),  which  the  Holy 
Creator  has  given. 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW 


MAN  AS  OWNER 

/ 
Thou  shall  not  steal. 


Thou  shalt  be  a  Proprietor  in  the 
Social  State. 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW 

The  natural  fact  on  which  this  law  is  built 
is  the  fact  that  man  is  an  owner.  God  is  an 
owner.  Man  is  an  owner  also.  **A11  the  whole 
heavens  are  the  Lord's ;  the  earth  hath  He  given 
to  the  children  of  men,"  is  a  good  text  for  the 
study  of  the  Eighth  Commandment.  "Thou 
shalt  not  steal"  means,  first  of  all,  "Thou  shalt 
be  not  a  thief  but  an  owner." 

What  is  it  that  by  the  power  of  nature  man 
owns?  We  talk  of  common  rights  and  of  nat- 
ural rights.  But  we  take  a  too  academic  ac- 
count of  that  right  which  is  deepest  of  all 
rights,  that  one  in  which  those  rights  most  on 
our  tongue  are  themselves  submerged,  the  right 
of  ownership  of  the  Social  State  itself.  For 
the  Social  State  is  essentially  an  association  of 
Proprietors.  Man,  as  man,  is  the  owner  of  the 
Social  State.  Of  this  ownership  a  man,  to  be  in 
vital  health,  must  be  proudly  aware.  "The 
earth  hath  He  given  to  the  children  of  men," 
and  the  jewel  of  that  possession  is  the  brother- 
hood, the  interweaving  of  the  human  life,  which 
is  society  itself.  Unless  man  reaches  up  above 
the  earth  and  brings  down  some  of  the  cohesion 
of  the  eternal  world,  some  of  the  Right  that 
rules  there,  he  is  less  than  man, — unsocial. 
When  he  establishes  society,  then  he  begins  a 

99 


100       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

human  career.  Society  is  his  first,  his  essential 
possession.  Because  he  is  a  man  he  is  an  owner 
in  society  and  of  society:  he  holds  a  share  of 
stock  in  it.  And  Society  is  the  "Lord  para- 
mount" in  which  all  rights  are  vested  and  by 
which  all  rights  are  to  be  defended  and  main- 
tained. 

If  then  a  man  is  to  be  a  man,  if  he  is  to  de- 
velop his  spirit,  he  must  obey  this  law  written 
by  God's  finger  in  the  stone  table  of  his  nature. 
He  must  be  true  to  the  fact  that  he  is  a  pro- 
prietor. 

It  is  usual  to  account  this  law  as  concerned 
with  property  distinguished  in  some  way  from 
persons.  But  such  thinking  is  not  accurate,  it 
ignores  the  nature  of  property,  it  violates  the 
meaning  of  the  thing.  Indeed,  if  property  be 
what  it  is  often  said  to  be,  there  would  exist  no 
moral  obliquity  in  the  seizing  of  another  man's 
goods,  and  no  essential  iniquity  in  a  thief.  A 
thief  would  be  only  impolite.  A  loss  of  goods 
by  robbery  would  be  not  a  wrong  but  only  an 
irritating  inconvenience. 

For  what  is  property?  Many  persons  think 
of  it  solely  in  terms  of  land,  houses,  cattle, 
shares  of  stock,  or  money, — and  have  in  mind 
merely  some  material  that  can  be  weighed  and 
measured.  There  is,  it  is  true,  a  colloquial  mis- 
use of  the  word  that  encourages  such  a  thought. 
For  example,  we  say  "The  man  died  but  the 


>.J».»,    •    -1      » 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW  '  *' '  * ' '  1^1 

property  survived,"  and  we  get  by  suggestion 
a  picture  of  the  visible  goods  collected  and 
awaiting  a  new  owner.  But  the  collected  mate- 
rials alone  are  not  property.  Property  is  a 
right  vested  in  a  person.  It  is  a  relation  be- 
tween a  person  and  some  specific  material.  It 
is  neither  the  person  nor  the  material,  but  it  is 
the  relation  between  the  two.  It  is  a  right, — 
and  the  right  is  to  an  exclusive  authority  over 
some  particular  thing. 

Material,  until  it  has  attained  the  condition 
of  property,  has  no  value.  Some  person,  or 
some  company  of  persons,  must  have  the  right 
to  an  exclusive  authority  over  it  and  must  be 
secure  in  that  right,  or  else  material  cannot  be 
property  and  cannot  have  value.  All  the  treas- 
ures of  the  Solar  System  might  be  collected  on 
the  earth,  but  if  they  were  not  property,  if  no 
man  or  no  nation  was  secure  in  ownership,  they 
would  be  as  valueless,  they  would  be  as  little 
used  as  material  treasure  always  is  in  savage 
lands  whose  characteristic  is  the  comparative 
absence  of  rights. 

Property  is  a  right,  a  spiritual  thing,  a  per- 
sonal matter.  It  is  this  which  carries  the  value. 
It  is  this  which  awakes  the  desire.  This  it  is 
which  makes  property  a  force  in  the  moral  de^ 
velopment  of  men.  And  this,  this  right,  prop- 
erty, is  bom  out  of  society  itself.  A  man  as 
such  is  an  owner.     He  owns  society.     And  so- 


I6k       T'HE  CODE  GE  THE  SPIRIT 

ciety,  the  solvent  of  all  rights,  develops  in  so 
far  as  man  imposes  the  peculiar  proprietor- 
ship of  social  sovereignty  upon  the  earth,  and 
converts  the  earth's  material  wastes  into  the 
moral  thing,  property,  to  which  society  owes 
protection  and  by  which  society  itself  stands  or 
falls.  Think  of  property  as  a  right,  as  nothing 
other  than  a  right,  and  the  assertion  that  so- 
ciety stands  or  falls  by  it  is  clearly  true.  It 
gives  body  to  the  familiar  and  acceptable  state- 
ment that  only  that  nation  is  stable  which  is 
right-eous,  that  is,  full  of  right. 

Now  there  are  other  rights  than  property 
rights.  There  are  certain  essentially  personal 
rights  which  are  common  in  any  developed  so- 
ciety. These  are  the  ones  most  often  in  the  pub- 
lic mind  and  on  the  public  tongue.  But  these 
are  not  only  dependent  for  actualization  upon 
the  social  state,  as  is  property,  but  also  their 
operation  is  subordinate  to  the  operation  of 
property  rights.  Life,  justice,  liberty,  freedoms 
of  speech  and  travel,  depend  on  the  social  state. 
To-day  and  here  they  may  be  maintained.  To- 
morrow and  elsewhere  or  here,  they  may  be  dis- 
regarded. They  depend  on  the  State,  on  the 
condition  of  the  State,  on  the  communal  charac- 
ter. And  these  rights  touch  directly  on  man's 
use  of  those  materials  of  the  earth  by  means  of 
which  property  itself  is  created.  The  right 
which  is  primary,  the  right  which  society  must 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW  108 

first  of  all  keep  clear-headed  about  in  order  to 
administer  itself,  to  keep  itself  in  health,  and 
make  other  and  more  favorite  rights  possible, 
is  property.  Therefore  it  is  that  the  roots  of 
social  welfare  are  touched  when,  calling  men  to 
a  sense  of  their  proprietorship  of  the  social 
state,  and  fixing  attention  upon  the  idea  of 
property,  we  hear  the  law  "Thou  shalt  not 
steal."  Its  positive  assertion  is  "Thou  shalt 
live  in  human  society  as  an  owner." 

But  difficult  as  it  is  to  keep  the  sense  of  prop- 
erty as  a  right  as  distinct  from  a  material,  it  is 
more  difficult  to  keep  on  the  side  of  the  truth 
about  title  to  specific  property.  Here  it  is  that 
confusion  is  heaped  up.  Because  title  is  ac- 
quired very  largely  by  fashion  or  fancy,  it  is 
hard  to  see  the  momentous  importance  of  main- 
taining an  owner  in  his  right.  And  yet  it  is 
not  only  important  but  it  is  the  very  hope  of 
social  betterment. 

For  how  is  title  acquired.?  It  is  acquired  by 
service.  It  is  transferable  through  the  action 
of  "Market  price."  Title  is  not  had  through 
the  pressure  of  population  on  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence, that  is,  by  force  of  need.  Necessity 
in  itself  confers  no  benefit  on  society.  Service 
confers  a  benefit  and  so  acquires  a  right.  But 
all  services  do  not  acquire  property  rights. 
Services  may  be  purely  personal  just  as  rights 
may  be  purely  personal;  and  such  services  may 


104i       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

win  praise,  respect,  and  gratitude,  or,  on  the 
contrary,  may  win  persecution,  crucifixion,  or 
neglect;  they  may  or  may  not  win  property 
rights.  It  is  largely  a  matter  of  market  price, 
which  means  the  prevailing  taste,  fancy,  and  de- 
sire of  the  people.  Only  a  community  which 
sets  high  esteem  upon  the  accumulation  of  prop- 
erty rights  as  distinct  from  culture,  leisure, 
taste,  and  the  like,  may  either  accumulate 
wealth  or  include  large  numbers  of  persons  dis- 
tressed by  poverty  and  depressed  by  failure  to 
get  what  they  so  much  desire.  The  high  mar- 
ket price  set  upon  riches,  the  life  energy  which 
people  willingly  exchange  for  them,  is  the  cause 
of  both  effects.  And  the  way  to  better  the 
condition,  the  way  which  is  the  hope  of  society, 
is  not  by  perversion  of  property  right,  nor  any 
compromise  between  service  as  the  path  to 
rights  and  necessity  (which  would  of  course 
destroy  the  cohesion  of  society  itself),  but  is  a 
change  in  the  prevailing  faith,  so  that  market 
price  may  change,  and  the  taste  and  fashion  and 
fancy  of  men  be  no  longer  confined  to  the  accu- 
mulation of  property  rights  but  be  expanded 
enough  to  include  a  full  measure  of  the  graces 
of  existence. 

The  disorder  of  social  opinion  to-day  is 
startling.  It  is  startling  in  particular  because 
it  entertains  no  sound,  no  genuine  hope.  To  be 
desirous  of  more  things  and  better;  to  wish  for 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW  106 

increased  wages,  is  wholesome  enough.  But  to 
spurn  the  facts  of  nature ;  to  pay  no  heed  to  the 
everlasting  fact  that  not  the  title  to,  but  the 
production  of  material  goods  in  a  condition  fit 
for  use  depends  upon  the  pressure  pf  population 
upon  the  means  of  subsistence ;  to  pay  still  less 
heed  to  the  uncontrollable  whimsicalities,  the 
freaks,  fancies,  and  errors  which  make  human 
nature  fickle  like  the  wind  while  at  the  same 
time  they  combine  to  create  market  price;  to 
talk  loudly  of  right  and  justice,  regardless  of 
service  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  inequalities 
in  individual  capabilities  on  the  other, — are  un- 
wholesome. It  is  the  obscurity  of  right  that  is 
startling.  To  attain  rights  by  temporarily 
abolishing  rights  is  a  delusion.  To  better  so- 
ciety by  paring  individual  liberty  and  capability 
to  the  quick  is  a  delusion  also.  And  such  opin- 
ion is  startling  because  although  false,  it  is  be- 
lieved. 

A  law  which  actually  does  govern  the  human 
spirit  is  the  thing  which  is  under  discussion 
here.  It  is  a  law  which  lights  up  the  way  where- 
on a  man  may  become  the  opposite  of  a  thief. 
And  property  is  the  subject  of  the  law 
because  property  is  the  right  for  the  sake  of 
which  society  organizes  and  by  means  of  which 
society  itself  is  both  developed  and  disciplined. 
Because  property  is  a  right,  the  personal  qual- 
ity of  this  law  appears.     And  because  the  ac- 


106       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

tualization  of  this  as  of  any  right  depends  on 
society  itself,  there  appears  also  the  common, 
the  natural  right  of  man  as  man  to  esteem  him- 
self an  owner  in  the  Social  State  whether  he 
hold  other  specific  property  rights  or  not. 

And,  further,  this  law  is  not  negative,  it  is 
positive.  Thou  shalt  be  this  practically  that 
thou  art  constitutionally.  Thou  shalt  live  as 
an  owner  thyself,  and  thou  shalt  maintain  the 
truth  that  every  person  is  an  owner.  A  man 
because  he  is  a  man  shall  be  a  proprietor  in  and 
of  the  Commonwealth. 

This  positive  demand  for  the  sense  of  propri- 
etorship is  a  commonplace  of  statecraft.  A 
sturdy  peasantry, — which  means  people  whose 
characteristics  grow  from  their  property  right 
in  a  home  and  a  bit  of  land, — a  sturdy  peasan- 
try is,  in  the  estimation  of  statesmen,  both  a 
nation's  pride  and  its  strength.  It  is  a  common- 
place too  of  philanthropic  work.  To  get  a  man 
who  is  down  onto  a  firm  foundation  where  it  be- 
comes almost  sure  that  he  will  improve,  one 
must  help  him  attain  a  sense  of  positive  propri- 
etorship over  something.  In  certain  serious 
educational  endeavors  to  produce  good  citizens, 
such  as  the  work  at  Tuskegee  Institute,  this  is 
happily  the  avowed  method.  It  need  hardly  be 
remarked  that  the  specific  sense  of  ownership, 
that  is,  partnership  in  society,  is  the  principle 
and  the  hope  of  a  democracy.     If  this  sense 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW  107 

cannot  be  widely  developed;  if  it  cannot  be  de- 
veloped with  a  correct  appreciation  of  owner- 
ship ;  if  the  responsibilities  of  ownership  be  not 
apprehended;  then  democratic  society  is  sure  to 
fail.  From  the  exercise  of  this  positive  sense 
of  ownership  spring  personal  health  and  hearti- 
ness. Force  grows  out  of  it,  and  ambition.  It 
developes  resolution  and  honest  pride.  The 
seed  of  manhood,  the  seed  of  the  well-being  of 
society  itself,  is  there. 

But  at  the  first  assertion,  this  seems  to  state 
the  very  cause  of  the  acknowledged  trouble  in 
the  social  conditions  of  the  world.  One  man 
here,  another  there,  has  said  "I  am  an  owner," 
and  he  has  lived  strenuously  in  obedience  to  his 
principle.  Now  he  seems  to  be  the  only  owner 
there  is.  Over  all  the  goods  in  sight  he  seems 
to  have  exclusive  authority, — and  almost  over 
the  persons  of  thousands  of  his  neighbors.  And 
the  principle  of  ownership  seems  to  be  the  cause 
of  this  monarchial  sort  of  condition.  But  it  is 
not  the  cause.  The  cause  is  deeper.  The  man 
who  lived  strenuously  as  an  owner  chose,  so  far, 
the  better  part.  He  said  "I  am  the  state."  So 
far,  he  said  well.  So  far,  his  principle  is  right 
and  true.  The  trouble  comes  because  so  few  of 
his  neighbors  take  the  same  stand.  The  favor- 
ite behavior  seems  to  be  to  deride  and  deny  the 
principle  in  practice,  but  to  acknowledge  it  in 
theory.     But  if  all  took  this  stand  practically; 


108       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

if  we  all  insisted  on  living  as  though  we  were 
the  state ;  if  each  man  lived  as  a  responsible  pro- 
prietor of  society,  as  an  owner  of  the  commu- 
nity, as  one  of  the  makers  of  "Market  price," 
— ^then  the  state  would  come  to  be  big  with 
choicest  life ;  we  should  cease  to  treat  social  en- 
deavors as  though  they  all  were  a  mere  scram- 
bling for  materials;  we  should  cease  measuring 
success  in  terms  of  property  right  alone.  But 
while  there  would  be  great  private  fortunes  be- 
cause some  men  excel  in  the  acquisition  of  prop- 
erty rights,  still  there  could  be  neither  indus- 
trial slavery  nor  any  eclipse  of  culture,  taste, 
thought,  morality,  piety,  and  tranquility.  Eco- 
nomic conditions  are  the  fruit  of  social  faith. 

It  is  usual  now  to  dwell  almost  exclusively  on 
the  debt  owed  by  the  rich  to  the  poor.  The 
debt  of  course  exists,  because  of  the  mutuality 
of  life.  But  therefore,  also,  the  poor  owe  a 
debt  to  the  rich.  If  the  poor  would  pay  it,  it 
would  be  the  first  step  in  the  control  of  that 
whimsical  thing,  market  price.  If  the  poor 
would  pay  their  debt,  it  would  then  be  easier 
than  it  is  now  for  either  the  rich  man  or  the 
poor  man  to  get  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
For  the  poor  now  follow  the  rich.  They  seem 
to  adore  his  riches.  Worse  still,  they  applaud 
the  rich  man's  follies  and  ignore  his  virtues. 
The  rich  man's  pomp  wins  envious  applause. 
But  who  wants  his  responsibilities,  his  concen- 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW  109 

trated  industry,  his  anxieties,  his  tenacity  of 
purpose?  His  pomp,  his  apparent  doing-as-he- 
pleases,  his  errors,  and  his  sins  are  more  ap- 
proved than  his  virtues.  And  by  this  mistaken 
approval,  the  rich  man,  whom  only  the  greatest 
men  have  been  able  to  pity, — is  liired  on  to  his 
own  destruction.  He  says  "I  am  the  state," 
and  he  says  well.  It  is  well  also  that  he  nurses 
his  desire  to  amass  wealth.  Almost  all  his  neigh- 
bors in  these  industrial  days  have  the  same  de- 
sire. But  it  is  his  neighbors'  fault,  as  well  as  his 
own,  that  the  rich  man  can  begin  to  say  to  his 
neighbor,  "You  are  not  the  state  but  I  am." 
When  he  says  this,  both  himself  and  neighbor 
are  to  blame  and  are  the  losers. 

But  every  man  finds  the  keeping  of  this  law 
a  hard  task.  The  usual  way  to  speak  about  the 
state  is  to  say  "They"  do  this  or  that.  Who  is 
this  "They".?  So  do  men  speak  of  the  Church 
and  say  "She"  teaches  this  or  that.  Who  is  this 
"She".?  "She"  is  thought  nowadays  to  be  de- 
crepit. Is  the  state  to  become  decrepit  too? 
Only  identification  of  oneself  with  society ;  only 
personal  responsibility  for  essential  social  enter- 
prise ;  only  a  citizenship  and  a  criminality  meas- 
ured in  terms  of  such  identification,  can  make 
social  stages  into  stages  of  progress.  "I  am  the 
state  and  my  neighbor  is  the  state,"  is  the  prin- 
ciple that  can  generate  health  in  a  community. 
And  it  means  that  nobody  must  steal.     Rich 


110       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

man,  poor  man,  nor  the  community  itself, — no 
one  must  steal.  Stealing  violates  right.  And 
right  is  the  only  foundation  upon  which  society 
can  rise. 

There  is  nothing  so  frequently  disappointing 
as  the  truth.  If  the  troubles  of  social  systems 
could  be  settled  in  ways  widely  believed  in  and 
occasionally  attempted;  if  revolution,  if  public 
violation  of  contract,  which  is  another  name  for 
confiscation;  if  collectivism,  whose  other  name 
is  making  everything  or  many  things  every- 
body's business, — could  guarantee  individual 
liberty  and  individual  enterprise;  if,  in  short, 
all  could  be  made  right  by  simply  starting 
anew,  than  human  nature  would  needs  be  much 
other  than  it  seems.  It  is  probable  that  there  is 
no  new  social  system  under  the  sun.  Indeed,  of 
social  systems  it  may  be  said,  as  Doctor  John- 
son said  of  governments,  that  one  is  as  likely 
to  be  as  good  or  as  bad  as  another.  For  the 
roots  of  difficulty  are  not  in  social  systems  as 
such,  nor  in  governments  as  such,  but  in  human 
nature  itself.  Social  conditions  will  be  good 
when  the  rich  are  public  spirited,  merciful,  and 
honest;  and  when,  at  the  same  time,  the  poor 
are  honest,  and  self-reliant,  and  public  spirited. 
It  is  a  matter  of  faith  in  the  stern  truth.  To 
hope  for  good  conditions  apart  from  good  peo- 
ple, is  vain.  To  confuse  goodness  with  either 
riches  or  poverty,  is  idle.    Rich  and  poor  alike, 


THE  EIGHTH  LAW  111 

young  and  old,  ignorant  and  learned  must  obey 
the  law  which  obliges  the  maintaining  of  prop- 
erty right  as  the  price  required  for  the  exist- 
ence of  society  itself.  For  the  law  is  universal. 
It  is  the  basic  law  of  the  general  association  of 
men,  in  which  association  alone  manhood  can 
come  to  perfectness.  It  is  a  path  along  which 
the  spirit  of  a  man  must  walk  in  order  to  be  de- 
veloped. Habitually  to  maintain  property 
right,  to  distinguish  habitually  between  prop- 
erty and  material,  is  to  subject  the  soul  to  a 
habitual  training. 

But  in  these  terms,  who  is  the  thief?  Who- 
ever takes  for  his  own  whatever  belongs  by  right 
to  another  is  a  thief.  A  man  who  exacts  more 
than  is  appointed  him, — one,  that  is,  who  dis- 
regards market  price,  is  a  thief.  So  is  he  a 
thief  who  yields  dishonest  service  and  yet  grasps 
an  honest  wage.  These  all  feed  a  thievish  spirit 
and  train  their  manhood  in  knavery.  But  most 
of  all  are  they  thieves  who  either  with  despotic 
will  rob  men  of  ownership  in  the  Social  State, 
or  with  demagogic  will  spoil  men  with  illusions 
of  false  rights  and  rob  them  of  the  truth. 
These  are  thieves  indeed. 

And  the  robbed  are  always  society  itself.  I 
may  lose  or  another  may  lose ;  but  by  a  thievish 
action,  society,  people  generally,  men  as  men, 
finally  suffer.  Perverted  rights,  false  rights, 
must  mean  a  social  ill  effect.     The  home,  the 


11£       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

savings,  the  pride  of  one  man  totter  and  weaken 
when  the  pride  and  savings  and  home  of  another 
man  weaken  and  totter.  It  is  man  as  man  for 
whom  Right  operates.  No  man  can  escape 
either  the  beneficence  of  right  or  the  malignity 
of  wrong. 


THE  NINTH  LAW 

MAN  AS  WITNESS 

Thou   shalt  not  bear  false  witness 
against  thy  neighbor. 

4 

Thou  shalt  report  the  truth. 


THE  NINTH  LAW. 

The  root  word  of  this  law  is  witness.  Com- 
monly it  is  thought  that  the  word  false  gives 
here  the  basic  idea.  That  is  a  mistake.  The 
basic  idea  is  the  one  which  serves  as  foundation 
for  the  moral  idea.  That  a  man  is  a  witness  is 
a  settled  matter.  The  Creator  settled  it. 
Whether  or  not  the  man  be  false,  is  as  the  man 
chooses.  Witness-bearing  is  the  expression  of 
a  natural  fact.  It  is  the  function  of  one  par- 
ticular element  of  man's  constitution. 

Until  a  man  perceives  this  part  of  his  natural 
likeness  to  his  Maker;  until  he  sees  that  living 
is  a  process  of  witness-bearing, — a  man  lacks 
complete  knowledge  of  what  it  is  to  be  a  man. 
A  man  is  a  witness  because  he  is  a  man,  and  his 
development  in  spirit  depends  upon  the  fact. 

Bearing  witness  is  a  wide-reaching  responsi- 
bility. In  one  most  prominent  human  activity, 
the  administration  of  justice,  it  is  almost  the 
characteristic  feature.  Wherever  there  are  men, 
there  are  also  courts  of  justice  and  the  technical 
bearing  of  witness.  Even  in  a  condition  of  sav- 
agery, society  has  some  form  for  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  law  and  therefore  some  technical 
witness-bearing. 

Witness-bearing  has,  indeed,  an  end  greater 
than  itself.     It  is  the  handmaid  of  Judgment. 

115 


116       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

By  judgment  we  carry  on  our  lives.  Whatever 
we  have  to  do  we  do  by  judgment.  But  we 
arrive  at  judgment  through  witness-bearing. 
It  is  for  the  sake  of  a  judgment  according  to 
the  justice  of  the  law  that  witnesses  are  called 
before  the  bar.  This  is  the  way  to  get  light 
upon  the  paths  of  justice.  This  is  the  way  the 
mind  is  made  up.  And  the  technical  process  of 
the  courts  is  effective  because  all  living,  whether 
good  or  bad,  is  carried  on  by  judgment  and  all 
judgment  formed  by  testimony.  It  is  not  only 
a  few  hundred  thousand  summoned  to  court  to 
help  judges  make  up  their  minds  who  are  wit- 
nesses. We  all  are  witnesses,  and  by  means  of 
witness-bearing  we  all  are  continually  making 
up  our  minds.  Because  all  do  this,  therefore 
there  can  be  a  few  who  do  it  technically.  It  is 
not  the  courts  that  make  witnesses.  It  is  be- 
cause men  are  witnesses  by  nature  that  there  are 
courts. 

And  we  are  at  this  thing  always.  When  we 
speak  or  think  or  pray  or  wonder  we  are  testi- 
fying according  to  our  experience.  When  we 
listen  or  read  or  observe  or  hesitate  we  are  re- 
ceiving the  testimony  of  others  and  making  up 
within  ourselves  the  judgment  by  which  we  ad- 
minister our  life  and  influence.  Our  education 
is  largely  the  reception  of  the  testimony  of 
men.  What  a  man  regards  as  the  things  to 
which  he  may  bear  witness  he  puts  into  the  book 


THE  NINTH  LAW  117 

he  writes.  All  communication  is  a  witness-bear- 
ing process  toward  the  judgment  by  which  we 
live.  But  the  root  of  the  energy  which  pro- 
duces judgment  is  testimony,  witness-bearing, 
to  which  a  man  is  called  because  it  is  his  nature. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  witness  must 
not  be  false  in  the  sense  of  being  deceitful.  If 
by  the  path  of  witness-bearing  God  conducts 
the  human  spirit  to  its  fulfilment,  that  implies, 
obviously  the  expurgation  of  all  deception. 
But  the  falseness  which  blocks  the  beneficent 
leading  of  our  spirits  to  their  fruition,  is  not 
merely  the  foolish  lying,  the  idle  misstatings  we 
indulge  in,  but  it  covers  the  wide  region  in 
which  mistakes  and  errors,  negligences  and  ig- 
norances abound. 

The  false  witness  of  a  deceitful  heart  works 
danger  enough.  That  is  true.  Lying,  hypoc- 
risy, teaching  and  preaching  what  we  do  not 
believe,  hurt  the  common  life  severely;  they 
keep  it  double  faced.  One  must  not  belittle  the 
injury  that  lying  can  and  does  do.  It  is  the 
bad  fruit  of  a  bad  seed.  Jealousy,  envy,  fear, 
the  love  of  success,  the  greed  for  influence  or 
for  popularity,  the  coils  of  partisanship,  the 
heat  of  reform,  the  selfish  service  of  even  the 
true  God, — produce  in  men  the  retroactive  poi- 
son of  a  lie,  such  witnessing,  that  is  to  say,  as 
has  falseness  at  its  heart.  This  is  true  enough 
and  bad  enough.  But  this,  like  all  gross  evil, 
tends  to  cure  itself  because  it  shames  men. 


118       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

Equal  hurt  is  done  by  witness  which  is  false, 
not  because  the  witnesser  is  a  liar,  but  because 
he  is  mistaken.  Comfortable  or  cherished 
errors  are  as  injurious  as  any  of  the  other  faults 
of  men.  For  errors  wear  the  halo  of  a  good  in- 
tention. Errors,  ignorances,  negligences, — are 
the  ways  that  people  who  mean  well  but  will  not 
take  the  trouble  to  know,  bear  false  witness. 
Their  witness  is  contrary  to  the  facts  of  nature. 
It  controverts  the  truth  of  God.  And  it  lays 
penalty  upon  the  spirits  of  men  because  fact 
alone,  God's  fact,  fact  as  it  is  in  all  of  nature, 
is  the  measure  of  the  truth  or  the  falsehood 
which  a  man  is  able  to  attain  and  enjoy. 

The  Indian  Mutiny  is  a  case,  on  the  part  of 
both  participants,  of  witness  false  because  mis- 
taken. The  Indian  soldiers  mutinied  because  all 
the  testimony  by  which  they  had  been  trained 
made  them  believe  that  tallow-covered  cart- 
ridges when  bitten  (as  they  had  to  be  before 
use  in  a  gun)  tainted  the  soul  eternally.  The 
English  administrators  persisted  in  the  use  of 
such  cartridges  because  the  testimony  by  which 
they  were  trained  led  them  to  believe  that  reli- 
gious fancies  submit  easily  to  the  pressure  of 
custom.  There  was  no  lying  about  it.  There 
was  false  witness ;  there  was  witness  contrary  to 
fact.  And  shameful  atrocities  innumerable,  not 
to  speak  of  death  and  agony,  fell  upon  the 
Indiamen  and  the  Englishmen  alike. 


THE  NINTH  LAW  119 

Another  similar  case  is  the  false  text-books 
in  our  American  public  schools.  By  false  wit- 
ness in  the  schools  the  children  are,  or  were, 
taught,  in  particular,  two  grievous  errors. 
They  learned  so  to  misunderstand  the  war  of 
the  American  Revolution  that  the  Administra- 
tion under  George  IH  has  for  years  been  com- 
monly identified  with  the  English  people. 
They  still  learn,  also,  to  misunderstand  the  im- 
portant, the  intimate  subject,  alcohol.  Of  the 
first  of  these  two  false  witnessings,  a  specific, 
admitted  result  was  the  defeat  of  the  treaty 
whereby  England  and  America  were  to  stand 
side  by  side  in  favor  of  arbitration  for  all  the 
nations  of  the  world  whenever  and  wherever 
war  is  threatened.  That  upward  step,  a  step 
which  might,  possibly,  have  prevented  the 
Russo-Japanese  war,  was  checked.  Of  the  sec- 
ond, the  false  witnessing  in  regard  to  alcohol, 
it  is  difficult  to  escape  the  conviction  that,  by 
the  power  of  reaction,  or  by  irritation  over  mis- 
taken teaching,  thousands  of  people  who  might 
easily  have  been  temperate  if  they  had  learned 
temperance,  have  ruined  themselves  by  alcohol. 
There  was,  probably,  no  lying  there;  there  was 
no  intentional  deceit.  But  there  was  false  wit- 
ness, for  the  testimony  was  contrary  to  fact. 

Common,  every-day  ignorance,  prejudice, 
fanaticism,  self-will,  and  obstinacy  are  the 
forces  that  work   this    sort    of  wrong.     "They 


120       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

know  not  what  they  do"  prayed  Jesus  as  he 
was  dying.  The  magnanimity  of  that  prayer 
is  majestic.  They  should  have  known.  And  it 
is  far  harder  to  die  because  of  the  sin  of  stu- 
pidity than  because  of  the  sin  of  clever  deceit. 

But  such  effects  of  false  witness  are  on  every 
side.  If  it  is  not  a  religious  issue  such  as  pro- 
duced the  Indian  Mutiny,  it  may  be  some  ques- 
tion about  the  Bible,  some  misuse  of  it,  or 
some  no-use-at-all  of  it.  It  may  be  a  question 
about  the  divine  revelations  through  natural 
science  and  the  influence  upon  our  beliefs  of 
new  knowledge  of  the  visible  world,  of  the 
stars,  and  of  the  evolutionary  processes.  If  it 
is  not  a  matter  concerning  alcohol  or  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution,  it  may  be  about  the  compara- 
tive merit  of  another  age,  another  country,  an- 
other civilization.  But  whatever  vital  matter 
be  involved,  if  the  witness  about  it  be  mistaken, 
if,  for  any  reason,  it  be  contrary  to  fact,  then 
men,  women,  and  children  are  fed  on  the  poison 
of  error  whose  effect  is  inevitably  tragic. 

Tragic  is  the  correct  word.  Any  witness 
which  is  contrary  to  fact  involves  fatality.  It 
kills.  It  kills  not  only  in  bone  and  body,  but 
in  happiness  and  character.  All  witness  works 
out  finally  either  for  or  against  human  life. 
The  goal  of  witnessing  is  our  neighbor. 

It  is  usual  to  think,  however,  that  when  we 
read  books  or  study  stars,  or  teach  arithmetic 


THE  NINTH  LAW  121 

or  religion, — especially  if  by  doing  this  we 
make  our  living — that  the  work  is  upon  plain 
materials  or  plain  ideas.  The  man  who  is 
called  practical  just  because  he  manages  things 
may  be,  in  fact,  far  more  impracticable  than 
many  an  absent-minded,  dreamy  student.  For 
many  such  students  realize  keenly  that  they  are 
at  work  really  upon  people ;  while  the  practical 
man  quite  commonly  thinks  he  is  working  upon 
things.  But  all  labor,  all  endeavor,  in  short, 
all  witnessing  by  speech  or  act,  works  out  at 
length  for  or  against  men  and  women.  The 
geologist,  for  example,  works  to  systematize  a 
knowledge  that  shall  be  a  tool  for  men.  The 
merchant  works  by  word  and  act  to  exchange 
materials  which  finally  are  used  by  men.  So, 
also,  the  astronomer,  although  his  eye  is  al- 
ways on  the  stars,  bears  a  witness  which  affects 
not  the  stars  but  his  neighbors.  It  was  astron- 
omy that  sent  Columbus  over  the  Atlantic  and 
disclosed  America.  The  personal  consequence, 
the  human  result,  is  the  thing  which  is  finally 
and  always  at  stake. 

So,  therefore,  this  ninth  law  for  the  govern- 
ment of  manhood  runs  thus :  A  man  is  by  nature 
a  witness,  and  his  witnessing,  which  is  bound 
to  affect  his  neighbors  because  by  the  testimony 
which  feeds  their  judgment  all  men  live,  must 
be  free  not  simply  from  a  false  witness  of  his 
own    but  also    from    any    variation    from  the 


122       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

truth  as  it  is  seen  by  God.  In  other  words,  a 
man  is  called  by  nature  to  be  a  pioneer  in  the 
realms  of  truth,  his  business  is  to  discern  the 
truth  and  report  it.  This  law  is  not  only  writ- 
ten in  our  members,  but  there  it  works  and  pro- 
duces history. 

For  there  are  always  in  the  world  conspicu- 
ous men,  conspicuous  social  movements,  whose 
motive  power  is  this  inwritten,  this  God-oper- 
ated law.  It  is  already  late  to  explain  in  terms 
of  this  law  the  service  rendered  by  the  men  of 
physical  science  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
God  raised  up  those  men  to  bear  witness  to  the 
truth.  It  is  usual  to  recall  the  fact  that 
men's  obedience  to  this  law  written  in  men's  na- 
ture, explains  the  rise  of  a  civilization  governed 
largely  by  Christ's  principles.  To-day  the  study 
of  the  Bible,  and  the  critical  examination  of  fa- 
miliar opinions  and  traditions  in  religion,  are  a 
part  of  men's  present  response  to  this  inwrit- 
ten law  of  God.  The  hot  controversy  in  indus- 
trial and  political  affairs  to-day  is,  also,  to  be 
explained  as  the  working  of  this  law  in  our 
members. 

Truth  purged  of  all  error  is  this  law's 
object.  What  the  Creator  has  put  into  our 
possible  experience;  what  the  Creator  himself 
can  see, — ^that  is  what  men  who  will  be  men  are 
bound  to  search  out.  Scientists,  reformers,  stu- 
dents, try  to  tell  their  neighbors  what  God  has 


THE  NINTH  LAW  123 

shown  to  them.  All  men,  indeed,  are  moved  to 
do  this  thing.  And,  all  alike,  threatened  both 
by  a  falseness  of  our  own  and  by  the  comfort 
of  favorite  error,  we  stammer  and  stumble  at 
the  task.  But  the  task  is  a  man's  task.  Happy 
indeed  is  any  man  who  can  believe  practically 
in  the  fact  that  every  atom  of  his  witnessing 
which  is  true,  is  and  must  be  a  help  to  all  man- 
kind. 

It  is  significant  that  the  manhood  of  Christ 
rested  largely  upon  his  sense  of  this  law.  "Art 
thou  a  king  then?"  said  Pilate,  scoffing.  His 
standard  of  royalty  was  imperial  Caesar.  But 
the  obscure  but  radiant  man  revealed  another 
standard  when  he  said,  "I  am  a  king."  Caesar 
was  a  king.  This  peasant  was  a  king,  also. 
For,  "to  this  end  was  I  bom,  and  for  this  cause 
came  I  into  the  world  that  I  should  bear  wit- 
ness unto  the  truth."  To  bear  witness  unto  the 
truth  is  the  kingly  duty  and  the  measure  of  the 
kingly  character.  Such  witness-bearing  made 
Christ  what  he  was.  And  such  witness-bearing 
is  obedience  to  the  law  which  calls  every  man  to 
fulfil  his  nature  and  contribute  to  the  better- 
ment of  men  by  being  an  honest  herald  of  fact. 


THE  TENTH  LAW 

MAN  AS  TRADER 

Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's 
house,  thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neigh- 
bor's  wife,  nor  his  servant,  nor  his 
maid,  nor  his  ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor  any 
thing  that  is  his. 

Thou  shalt  exchange  the  fruits  of 
the  spirit. 


THE  TENTH  LAW 

The  fact  in  human  nature  on  which  the  tenth 
law  of  right  and  wrong  stands  is  that  man  is 
by  nature  a  trader.  He  must  exchange.  He 
must  barter.  Unless  he  gives  something  a  man 
can  get  nothing.  Living  is  a  process  of  giving 
and  taking  by  the  means  of  exchange.  There 
is  neither  unresponsive  bestowal  nor  any  acqui- 
sition by  robbery;  but  there  is  exchange. 
When  a  man  gives  he  does  get  something. 
When  he  takes  he  always  gives.  Whether  he 
knows  or  cares  to  know  what  he  gives  or  what 
he  takes,  the  law  still  holds: — ^nothing  is 
received  whenever  nothing  is  given;  and  when- 
ever something  is  given  something  is  received. 
The  exchange  stands  by  nature.  Man's  task  is 
to  conduct  it  in  choice  and  valuable  commodi- 
ties and  to  will  that  it  should  be  immediately 
and  admittedly  fair.  But  whatever  the  man 
may  do,  the  fact  stands.  And  because  the  fact 
is  there  governing  mankind,  therefore  there 
rests  on  it  a  law  by  which  man's  spirit  is  devel- 
oped or  destroyed.  Man  is  by  nature  a  trader 
and  the  law  is — Thou  shalt  not  covet,  th^t  is, 
trade  falsely  or  in  ignoble  goods,  but  thou 
shalt  trade  so  as  to  develop. 

Coveting  means  base  trade  in  things  ma- 
terial or  spiritual.     That  is  not  an  exhaustive 

127 


128       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

definition  which  makes  it  mean  a  wishing  hard 
for  things  that  others  have.  There  is  an  emula- 
tion in  desire  for  good  things  which  is  reason- 
able and  right.  That  things  belong  to  another 
does  not  make  it  wrong  to  wish  for  such  things. 
In  that  point  some  instruction  misses  the  mark. 
For  the  mark  is  the  rendering  of  a  fair  ex- 
change for  such  good  things  as  a  man  desires. 
A  man  ought  to  desire  things  that  are  good 
and  useful  not,  of  course,  just  because  they  are 
his  neighbor's,  nor  yet  to  despoil  nor  to  outdo 
the  prosperity  of  his  neighbor;  but  he  ought 
to  desire  them  for  the  same  reason  that  his 
neighbor  did, — ^because  they  are  serviceable. 
Such  desire  is  not  simply  good,  it  is  duty.  And 
the  mark  this  law  aims  at  is  the  companion  de- 
sire,— ^the  will  to  pay  for  these  good  things.  A 
man  shall  pay  for  what  he  gets, — ^that  is  the  es- 
sence of  this  law.  Desire  what  you  will,  but  be 
willing  to  pay  the  price. 

The  Book  of  Common  Prayer  points  this  out. 
It  says  that  the  tenth  law  of  a  wholesome  life 
is  that,  beginning  in  childhood,  each  person 
"Should  learn  and  labor  truly  to  get  mine  own 
living  and  to  do  my  duty  in  that  state  of  life 
unto  which  it  shall  please  God  to  call  me."  We 
may  get  more  and  more  goods, — materials, 
learning,  health,  friends,  character, — but  we 
must  will  to  pay  and  must  learn  how  to  pay  for 
them  because  that  is  the  way  to  be  fit  for  the 


THE  TENTH  LAW  129 

station  unto  which  God  is  pleased  to  conduct  us. 
The  sin  of  coveting  is  the  will  to  get  something 
for  nothing.  Such  will  is  sin  because  it  is  false. 
We  get  something  when  we  give  something. 
We  get  nothing  when  we  give  nothing.  If  we 
would  have  good  things  we  must  give  good 
things.  And  the  will  to  pay  up,  to  pay  enough, 
to  pay  in  good  coin, — that  is  the  subject  of  this 
law.  It  is  based  on  the  natural  fact  that  man 
is  a  trader. 

It  is  apparent  that  there  is  close  affinity  be- 
tween the  laws  of  ownership  and  of  trading; 
that  is,  between  the  law  against  stealing  and 
the  law  which  warns  us  not  to  covet.  Indeed, 
none  of  these  laws, — as  is  the  case  in  any  code, 
— is  abstract  or  disconnected  from  the  others; 
and  these  two,  it  may  be,  are  noticeably  affi- 
anced. The  distinction  which  does  exist  is  one 
of  objectivity.  The  thief  violates  a  right  of 
which  he  should  be  the  guardian.  The  coveter 
cultivates  beggary  in  his  own  soul.  It  is  likely, 
it  is  true,  that  coveting  precedes  and  begets 
most  theft.  The  embezzler,  when  he  pauses  to 
excuse  himself,  is  extravagant  in  his  estimate  of 
the  services,  the  inadequately  remunerated  ser- 
vices, which  he  asserts  that  he  has  habitually 
rendered.  He  thinks  that  somewhere  in  our 
misty  environment  of  rights  and  duties,  he  can 
perceive  his  right  to  a  larger  portion  of  the 
country's  prosperity    than,    according    to  the 


130       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

contracts  to  which  he  has  agreed,  has  fallen  to 
him.  Either  by  self-deception  he  estimates  his 
services  falsely  and  without  regard  to  market 
price,  or  else  he  puts  on,  without  any  qualifica- 
tion, the  pauper  spirit  and  becomes  so  willing 
to  acquire  without  an  equivalent  payment  as  to 
make  it  natural  for  him  to  violate  rights  and 
to  appropriate  the  fruits  of  the  services  of 
others.  The  affinity  between  the  two  laws  is 
thus  close,  but  the  distinction  is  also  clear.  The 
thief  is  a  violator ;  he  is  the  doer  of  a  bad  deed. 
The  coveter  is  he  who  desires  to  get  something 
for  nothing,  he  who  desires  to  evade  payment, 
he  who  is  willing  to  be  (though  not  to  seem)  a 
pauper,  he  who,  like  the  common  beggar  and 
the  common  tramp,  is  content  to  get  his  for- 
tunes,— his  food,  his  position,  his  citizenship, 
his  comfort, — at  somebody's  else  expense.  The 
thievish  embezzler  is  likely  to  be  a  coveter  as 
well  as  a  robber;  the  burglar  or  highwayman 
may  be  the  bold  and  bad  doer  only.  The  cov- 
eter, however,  whether  he  be  an  embezzler  or 
only  one  of  the  undiscovered  sinners,  is,  spir- 
itually, a  pauper. 

But  the  day  is  past  for  speaking  much  about 
the  man  who  fastens  a  greedy  eye  on  such  chat- 
tels of  his  neighbor  as  are  quaintly  named,  in 
the  Mosaic  language,  "His  house,  his  wife,  his 
ox,  his  ass,  nor  anything  that  is  his."  Men  do 
covet    and    hurt    their    souls    by    a    coveting 


THE  TENTH  LAW  ISl 

prompted  by  goods  and  chattels  which  other 
people  have.  But  the  world  has  risen  enough 
^  above  that  plane  of  virtue  and  sin,  that,  think- 
/  ing  of  coveting  in  such  terms  only,  it  is  hard 
for  many  to  see  any  vital  meaning  in  it  at  all. 
I  It  happens,  however,  that  although  certain 
people  look  greedily  upon  their  neighbor's  ma- 
terial goods,  still  they  are  not,  therefore,  the 
chief  and  peculiar  sinners.  Their  sin  has  but 
taken  a  vulgar  form.  They  are  sordid,  base. 
But  in  point  of  coveting,  their  more  elegant 
brothers  and  sisters  are  as  guilty  as  they.  For, 
while  it  is  true  that  the  better  conditioned  of 
us,  if  we  want  an  ox  or  an  ass  or  a  house  or  a 
servant,  go  quickly  and  without  repining  into, 
the  market  and  pay  the  price,  yet  if  we  want) 
popularity  and  social  commendation;  if  we 
want  piety  and  the  peace  of  God;  if  we  want 
courageous  faith, — ^we  are  far  too  likely  to  take 
it  out  in  coveting. 

Gossip  asserts  that  thousands  of  people  are 
wretched  because  they  are  not  successful  so- 
cially. In  nearly  every  case  the  reason  is  they 
will  not  or  do  not  pay  the  price.  The  price  is 
social  service  of  one  sort  or  another.  You 
must  be  able  to  change  water  into  wine;  to  con- 
tribute cheer  and  happiness  and  good  fellow- 
ship ;  you  must  cause  the  fermentation  of  social 
pleasure,  and  do  it  well,  that  is,  courteously  and 
naturally.     It  does  not  matter  what  the  assem- 


132       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

bly  of  souls  may  be, — a  fashionable  set  or  a 
workingman's  club,  or  even  an  institution  like 
a  church  or  a  business  house, — ^this  much  as  the 
purchase  price  of  welcome  fellowship,  this 
much  as  the  cost  of  a  social  starting  point,  is 
required. 

For  the  law  is  moral.  It  governs  moral  as 
well  as  material  transactions.  One  must  trade 
not  only  in  the  commodities  of  business  and 
the  materials  of  life,  but  also  in  commodities 
social  and  religious.  Would  you  be  popular.? 
Would  you  enjoy  the  sense  that  people  like  you 
and  desire  your  company.''  You  must  first  of 
all  proffer  the  price.  Would  you  be  virtuous 
and  reverent.?  Would  you  enjoy  such  peace 
of  God  as  can  make  you  at  one  with  men  of 
resolution  and  stability.?  You  must  first  of  all 
present  payment.  Or,  would  you  possess  such 
godly  armor  as  will  enable  you  to  walk  undis- 
mayed through  the  shadowy  valleys  which 
make  so  large  a  part  of  almost  every  life's  jour- 
ney.? You  must  pay  the  price  in  the  proper 
coin.  To  acquire  friends  you  must  yourself  be 
friendly.  To  acquire  the  peace  of  the  Eternal, 
to  develop  in  yourself  the  quality  of  Christ,  you 
must  be  contrite  and  of  humble  heart.  To  ac- 
quire courageous  faith  you  must  make  payment 
in  habitual  trust  in  God. 

For  these  prices  these  goods  can  be  had.    The 
law  allows  it.     It  is  a  moral  law,  a  law,  that  is. 


THE  TENTH  LAW  133 

which  governs  the  development  of  a  creature 
whose  nature  is  moral.  The  higher  possessions 
of  the  spirit  equally  with  the  tangible  posses- 
sions for  the  body's  uses  are  to  be  had  by  trad- 
ing. We  trade  with  the  industrial  world  and  so 
satisfy  our  material  wants.  We  trade  with  our 
neighbors,  our  family  and  our  friends,  so  as  to 
satisfy  our  aifectional,  social  wants.  We  trade 
with  God,  and  only  when  we  trade  with  God,  do 
we  satisfy  our  appetite  for  wholesomeness  of 
life.  In  this  sphere  of  trade  it  is  easy  and  usual 
to  covet,  idly  to  wish  or  timidly  to  repine. 

The  secret  wish  of  every  normal  man  or 
woman  is  to  be  a  good  person,  to  bear  the  godly 
stamp,  to  be  the  sort  of  person  we  have  all  heard 
of — an  entirely  tolerable  and  companionable 
sort  of  good  person.  But  to  pay  the  price; — 
that  is  another  matter.  Oftenest  we  are  content 
to  covet,  to  wish  for  virtue  but  to  buy  it  not. 
Yet  there  is  no  other  way  of  getting  anything. 
The  ox  and  the  ass  are  for  sale  at  a  price.  So 
are  social  satisfactions.  So  is  the  peace  of  God. 
So  is  faith.  A  man  must  not  covet.  He  must 
not  dream  his  character  away.  He  must  pay 
for  whatever  he  gets.  And  it  is  a  man's  duty 
both  to  want  and  to  get  those  things,  those 
moral  qualities,  which  belong  to  spiritual  pros- 
perity. 

And  with  positive  force  this  law  asserts  that 
a  man  must  trade.    We  are  bom  traders.    It  is 


134       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

as  much  human  nature  to  trade  as  it  is  human 
nature  for  the  blood  to  be  warm.  We  can't  help 
trading.  Only  it  is  our  bounden  necessity  to 
direct  our  commerce  to  those  concerns  which 
honestly  enrich  us  and  make  us  spiritually  better 
off.  Obviously  we  must  trade.  If  we  cheat  our- 
selves by  exchanging  worthless  effects,  we  are 
still  trading.  Obviously  also,  therefore,  must 
we,  to  cultivate  our  spirit,  trade  positively,  ac- 
tively, in  those  particular  goods  which  have 
value.  In  good  honest  respect  for  our  brethren, 
we  must  trade.  Courtesy,  modesty,  and  good 
will  we  must  exchange.  We  must  deal  in  piety, 
in  contrition,  in  discernment,  in  reverence  and 
prayer  and  worship.  By  such  commerce  we  ac- 
quire social  and  religious  riches.  And  there  is 
no  other  way  to  gain  a  spiritual  fortune. 

Happily,  by  such  trade  spiritual  riches  are 
positively  certain.  There  is  no  doubt  about  it. 
Trade  here  is  as  fair  as  any  trade  in  asses  or  in 
oxen  or  in  man  or  maid  servants.  "Whatsoever 
a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap."  You 
can  get  the  goods  if  you  pay  for  them.  You 
cannot  be  cheated  here  if  you  pay.  But  this 
way  of  payment  is  the  only  way.  An  ox  or  an 
ass  may  stray  into  your  bam  and  never  be  re- 
claimed. Materials  do  sometimes  get  misplaced 
in  the  world.  But  virtue  does  not.  The  peace 
of  God  does  not.  All  the  coveting  in  the  world 
is  just  so  much  self-deception.     It  is  even  a 


THE  TENTH  LAW  136 

sowing  to  the  wind.  For  the  law  is  simple  and 
plain  and  sensible  and  true.  He  who  violates  it 
is  at  odds  with  the  universe ;  he  is  at  odds  with 
God.  A  man  is  a  trader.  That  is  a  man's  fun- 
damental constitution.  His  trade  extends  into 
the  fields  of  fellowship  and  piety.  He  can  and 
he  must  buy  the  best  fruits  of  the  spirit.  It  is 
impossible  to  get  something  for  nothing.  There- 
fore let  no  man  befool  himself  by  living  covet- 
ously. 

Nowadays  this  God-operated  law  is  held  in 
peculiar  and  ominous  disdain.  For,  in  the  mis- 
used name  of  Charity,  we  are  all  taught  a  high 
degree  of  moral  and  spiritual  pauperism.  The 
teaching  is  that  it  is  all  ill  fortune  which  re- 
quires pay  for  the  things  we  properly  desire. 
From  good  government  to  good  food,  from  the 
higher  education  to  houses  of  prayer,  from 
leisure  to  labor, — ^the  doctrine  of  the  day  runs 
that  all  these  things  should  belong  to  every  man 
without  cost  to  him.  And  the  falsehood  works 
out  in  fields  in  which  its  very  presence  is  unsus- 
pected. For  it  is  obvious  enough  that  such 
teaching  will  hurt  irresolute,  idle,  and  dependent 
souls  whatever  their  condition.  By  its  influ- 
ence, many  names  will  be  added  to  the  list  of 
those  who  practically,  if  not  nominally,  are 
charges  upon  the  community.  Dependent  rich 
men  and  dependent  poor  men  are  products  of 
the  same  faith.     The  same  creed  produces  the 


186       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

prosperous  idler  and  the  incompetent  unem- 
ployed. This  is  obvious  enough.  But  in  nobler 
fields  the  infection  works,  and  men  who  desire 
to  be  heroic  and  brave  and  skilful  and  reverent, 
awake  to  find  themselves  destitute  of  these  things 
and  to  learn,  too  late,  that  there  was  a  price  to 

pay. 

It  is  too  much  to  say  that  the  manhood  of 

/  these  days  is  of  a  lower  grade  than  in  days 

^     gone  by.  But  who  will  deny  that  in  the  special 

and  finer  points  of  piety  and  reverence,  in  poesy 

,     of  mind,  in  a  realizing  sense  of  God,  in  religious- 

\   ness  of  life,  it  is  harder  than  it  once  was  to  be 

\  all  that  a  man  can  and  should  be?    We  are  not 

enough  trained  to  know  that,  like  other  riches, 

the   fruits   of  the   spirit   are   to  be   had   only 

through  exchange  and  for  a  price.     But  that  is 

the  truth.     And  the  law  by  which  God  grants 

us  our  decreed  development  is  "Thou  shalt  not 

covet,  but  thou  shalt  buy  the  fruits  of  the  spirit 

and  pay  for  them." 


PART  in 
SUMMARY  OF  THE  CODE 

MAN  AS  LOVER 

Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy 
soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind.  This 
is  the  first  and  great  commandment. 
And  the  second  is  like  unto  it ;  Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 
On  these  two  commandments  hang 
all  the  Law  and  the  Prophets. 

Thou  shalt  love  so  as  to  develop 
into  a  likeness  that  image  of  God 
which  is  photographed  by  nature  on 
the  film  of  the  soul. 


SUMMARY  OF  THE  CODE 

Under  the  epitomized  statement  of  the  whole 
code  of  laws  which  govern  our  spirit,  there 
stands,  as  was  noticed  in  the  case  of  each  par- 
ticular law,  a  natural  fact.  For  it  is  a  natural 
fact  that  man  is  a  lover.  Not  so  many  years 
ago  it  was  too  hard  for  men  to  see  that  there  is 
a  natural  basis  for  love.  To-day  it  is  less  dif- 
ficult to  see  this.  We  are  now  familiar  with  the 
fact  that  parental  responsibility  pervades  the 
sentient  world.  We  are  now  aware  of  tenden- 
cies in  brute  life  to  acts  of  unmistakable  mercy 
and  pity.  We  are  now  able,  also,  to  see  that 
even  the  severity  of  nature,  in  that  it  whips  its 
offspring  into  capability,  is  esteemed  with  the 
more  correctness  when  counted  as  expression  of 
a  loving  will.  Therefore  in  the  law  laid  upon  a 
man  to  live  as  a  lover,  we  are  the  more  able  to 
believe  that  Christ  and  His  living  voice,  the 
Church,  reveal  a  fact  in  human  constitution, 
namely,  that  by  creation  man  is  a  lover.  In 
accord  with  this  fact,  in  accord  with  this  nature, 
a  man  should  live. 

But  now  what  is  needed  by  most  men  is  that 
this  revelation  be  completed.  It  is  a  great  help 
for  a  man  to  know  the  name  correctly  given  to 
the  specific  sort  of  creature  which  he  himself  is. 
It  clarifies  his  judgment.     It  focalizes  his  self- 

139 


140        THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

adjustments.  The  advantage  is  comparable  to 
that  of  knowing  the  nature  of  any  instrument 
or  any  problem  which  awaits  our  mastery.  But 
in  the  present  case  we  step  from  one  puzzle  to 
another.  For,  while  we  rejoice  to  know  that, 
fundamentally,  we  are  of  the  beneficent  nature 
named  love,  yet,  pausing  to  consider  it,  we  see 
that,  like  all  riches,  this  rich  equipment  suffers 
the  greatest  waste  because  it  requires  the  great- 
est skill  in  its  administration.  We  are  lovers  by 
nature.     But  after  all  what  is  love? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  predominant  ele- 
ment in  our  thought  of  love  is  tenderness.  Only 
tenderness  could  be  for  our  minds  a  sufficient  in- 
dex of  the  parental  love  which  we  are  now  per- 
suaded can  be  found  throughout  the  animal  crea- 
tion. Something  of  tenderness  we  find  there,  so 
we  say  there  is  love.  In  the  love  spent  upon  our- 
selves it  is  the  tenderness  which  persuades  us  of 
love's  existence.  In  parent,  in  teacher,  in 
friend,  in  employer,  in  servant,  wherever  we 
confess  that  we  have  located  love,  there,  we  con- 
tend we  have  discovered  tenderness.  Other  ele- 
ments may  be  in  love.  It  is  tenderness  which 
wins  our  recognition  and  dominates  our  thought. 

And  although  in  our  reckoning  we  are  not  in 
positive  error,  we  are  in  practical  danger  of 
misunderstanding  and  of  consequent  misbe- 
havior. The  tenderness  in  love  is,  beyond  ques- 
tion, the  oil,  the  consolation  of  our  life.     So 


SUMMARY  OF  THE  CODE  141 

much  do  we  need  to  be  forgiven,  so  intensely  do 
we  yearn  for  sympathy,  so  ready  are  we  to  cry 
for  mercy,  that  the  exaltation  of  tenderness, 
the  source  of  these  coveted  blessings,  is  the 
most  natural  of  reckonings.  But  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  divine  equilibrium.  Even  love  is  not 
altogether  one  sided.  Tenderness  is  not  all 
there  is  in  it.  The  love  of  the  mother  hen  gath- 
ering her  chickens  under  her  wings  has  not 
ceased  though  the  form  of  it  be  changed  when 
she  deserts  her  brood  and  forces  responsibility 
upon  her  little  ones.  If  tenderness  were  all, 
surely  we  should  have  to  doubt  the  merit  of  love 
itself  when  we  remember  that  the  very  tender- 
ness of  the  love  spent  upon  us  by  God  and  men 
has  encouraged  us  to  misuse  and  waste  it.  The 
tenderness  which  is  in  love  may,  by  force  of 
willing  habit,  dominate  our  attention,  but  it  is 
our  honorable  privilege  to  see  not  the  obvious 
only  but  also  the  obscure  elements  in  this  love 
whose  tender  voice  although  it  sounds  like  the 
voice  of  one  who  comes  to  help,  may  yet  bring 
serious  hurt. 

For  there  is  a  love  that  kills.  Whether  it  be 
accurately  named  or  not,  it  is  named.  "One 
word  is  too  often  profaned,  for  me  to  profane 
it,"  said  Shelley,  and  he  had  in  mind  a  love 
which  passes  widely  as  the  badge  of  a  good  man. 
But  such  love  is  filled  with  secret,  unrecognized 
hostility  to  the  spirits  of  men  and  women.     Its 


142       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

language  is  the  language  of  excuse.  It  yields 
always  and  indiscriminately  what  is  miscalled 
by  the  great  name  Forgiveness,  for  the  reason 
that,  under  the  fancy  that  it  thinks  no  evil,  it 
has  fallen  short  of  any  comprehension  of  evil  at 
all.  So  much  does  it  smooth  away  that  there  is 
left  no  serious  difference  between  right  and 
wrong.  The  "justifiable  lie"  it  lingers  over  as 
over  a  sweet  morsel  to  be  secured  and  enjoyed 
as  of  ten  as  possible.  Euthanasia  is,  to  this 
emasculated  love,  a  height  of  mercy.  Pain  to  the 
feelings  or  the  flesh  is  its  most  shocking  ill.  It 
forgets  the  anguish  of  disgrace,  the  shame  of 
dishonor,  the  horrible  pit  of  cowardice, — for  it 
patronizes  Conscience.  In  the  name  of  such  love 
far  more  than  in  the  name  of  hate  or  malice,  bit- 
ter is  put  fof  sweet  and  sweet  for  bitter,  dark- 
ness is  put  for  light  and  light  for  darkness,  and 
men  and  women,  with  weak  or  complacent  smiles, 
call  evil  good  and  good  evil.  In  modern  life,  this 
poisonous  love  enjoys  a  place  of  honor.  In 
many  a  household,  in  many  a  friendly  circle, 
souls  are  daily  being  killed  by  kindness.  It  has 
high  place  and  power  in  much  of  the  patriotism 
and  the  philanthropy  of  these  times.  "Char- 
ity" as  much  as  anything  has  unmanned  citizen- 
ship in  both  church  and  state.  Justice,  in  its 
task  of  preventing  crime,  seems  to  have  adopted 
the  method  of  indulgence.  Worship  and  work, 
alike,  are  suffering  from  a  sentimentality  mis- 


SUMMARY  OF  THE  CODE  143 

called  love  toward  God  and  man.  It  is  a  fatal 
love.  It  is  the  offspring  of  pity.  But  the  love 
decreed  to  be  the  parent  of  virtue  is  the  off- 
spring of  worth.  Man  is  a  lover,  but  his  love 
must  be  such  as  honors  God  and  develops  the 
man  on  whom  the  love  is  spent.  ^ 

Love  for  God  honors  God.  And  here  love 
makes  little  use  of  that  tenderness  which  else- 
where is  often  mistaken  for  love  itself.  Love 
for  God  perceives  the  divine  merit,  the  divine 
integrity.  It  is  worth  in  God;  it  is  the  merit 
whereby  God  can  and  does  not  only  exercise  love 
Himself  but  generates  it  in  the  hearts  of  His 
creatures;  it  is  the  merit  whereby  the  divine 
equilibrium  of  tenderness  and  perseverance  and 
right  are  eternally  maintained.  To  discern 
God's  worth  is  to  loose  the  very  fountain  of 
love  within  the  human  heart  and  to  become  at 
once  a  lover  not  on  grounds  of  pity  but  on 
grounds  of  a  sublime,  a  majestic  worth  revealed 
to  eyes  straining  until  now  to  see  the  perfect. 

The  same  sort  of  love  we  are  required  to 
spend  on  men  as  well  as  on  God.  Filled  with 
tenderness  surely,  as  God's  own  love  is  filled, 
but  none  the  less  and  still,  like  God's  love,  bent 
upon  our  brothers  because  of  their  worth;  be- 
cause we  all,  as  children  of  the  Most  High, 
carry  within  us  as  our  essential  make  up  the  in- 
choate image  of  the  Father;  because,  also,  our 
common  life  is  ours  for  the  obvious  purpose  of 


144       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

developing  by  the  means  of  love  received  and 
love  given  that  inchoate  image  into  the  full 
measure  of  the  perfect  man,  the  Son,  the  copy 
of  God. 

What  the  essential  man  is  we  learn  by  a  study 
of  the  code  of  laws  which  govern  man's  spirit. 
That  code  is  the  fruit  of  racial  experience.  The 
students  of  the  human  spirit,  the  researchers 
working  in  the  laboratory  of  human  affairs, 
have  discerned  what  the  laws  of  man's  spirit  are 
and,  therefore,  what  a  man  essentially  is.  When 
man  was  made  he  was  made  to  be  something :  he 
was  endowed:  he  was  equipped  with  a  spiritual 
nature,  the  exercise  of  which  is  life,  and  the 
right  exercise  of  which  is  godly  life.  Human 
nature  may  admit,  it  is  true,  of  more  detailed 
description,  but  the  description  yielded  upon 
the  mount  of  Sinai  (a  laboratory  of  the  human 
spirit  under  a  master's  charge)  is  sufficient  and, 
in  meaning,  is  inexhaustible.  A  man  is  a 
thinker,  and  an  admirer;  he  is  a  receiver  or 
pupil,  a  creator,  and  an  heir ;  he  is  a  savior,  and 
a  priest;  he  is  an  owner,  and  a  witness,  and  a 
trader.  He  is  all  these,  these  forces,  these  func- 
tions, these  propensities.  He  is  this  image  of 
an  Eternal,  a  supreme  One,  who  has  the  world 
to  administer  and  make  worthy.  Once,  on  Sinai, 
a  master  man  looked  into  the  nature  of  God's 
children  and  saw  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  men 
are  this  sort  of  creature,  that  life  and  the  laws 


SUMMARY  OF  THE  CODE  145 

of  the  life  of  the  human  spirit  rest  upon 
these  natural  facts,  saw  that  any  man  who  ful- 
fills this  nature  attains  a  quality  of  life  such  as 
must  be  lived  by  the  Eternal  God  Himself.  This 
human  nature,  then,  is  the  image  of  God.  This 
is  the  inchoate  impression  of  God  worked  by 
nature  into  the  film  of  the  human  soul. 

And  the  love  which  can  develop  the  picture 
is  such  as  perceives  this  nature  perfected  in  God 
and  then  works  to  perfect  the  same  nature  in 
man.  To  such  love  as  can  reproduce  the  divine 
Original  a  man  is  called.  To  a  stern,  a  seri- 
ous, a  scientific  and  therefore  patient  but  deter- 
mined love  which  works  to  make  men  actually 
what  they  are  constitutionally,  a  man  is  called. 
Such  love  is  full  of  mercy  surely ;  but  also  it  is 
full  of  power.  It  is  capable  of  justice  as  well 
as  of  mercy.  The  tragedies  of  life  do  not  de- 
prive such  love  of  its  sanity.  It  knows  that 
good  and  evil  are  mysteriously  deep.  It  can 
look,  therefore,  with  unfailing  faith  and  hope 
on  the  wars,  the  ruin,  the  sin,  the  discourage- 
ment, the  broken  hearts  of  men;  for  it  sees  al- 
ways a  great  goal  of  social  excellence  attain- 
able even  though  distant.  It  is  sure  of  itself. 
To  it  God  is  majestic;  man  is  majestic  too. 
And  life,  as  this  love  esteems  it,  is  not  simply 
worth  while,  it  is  a  blessing,  it  is  a  natural  de- 
velopment, a  habitual  approach  toward  a  per- 
fect happiness.     "As  for  me,  I  will  behold  thy 


146       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

face  in  righteousness:  I  shall  be  satisfied,  when 
I  awake,  with  thy  likeness." 

Strength,  power,  worth,  in  short,  character- 
ize the  love  which  can  make  men's  spirits  live 
and  grow.  Natural  riches  are  its  foundations. 
Its  scope  reaches  to  the  moral  realm  wherein  the 
bad,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  under  perpetual 
summons  to  give  way  before  the  good,  and  the 
good  under  summons,  also,  to  give  way  before 
the  better  and  the  best.  And  the  temper  of 
this  love  is  positive.  It  is  always  positive.  It 
prefers  to  love  rather  than  to  be  loved.  It  is 
positive  in  its  standards  and  commands.  It  is 
positive  in  its  patience,  its  long-suffering,  its 
mercy.  It  is  positive  in  its  punishment.  It  is 
positive  in  its  forgiveness,  in  its  sorrow,  its 
self-surrender,  its  death.  In  length  and  depth 
and  breadth  the  love  with  which  God  loves, 
with  which  Christ  loved,  with  which  men  are 
called  on  to  love  both  God  and  man,  is  com- 
manding, adventurous,  audacious.  Its  quali- 
ties of  tenderness  and  indulgence  are  eminent, 
truly.  But  eminent  also,  even  if  less  winsome, 
are  the  qualities  of  capability,  efficiency,  expec- 
tancy, and  resolution.  Because  of  this,  the  love 
of  Christian  men  for  God  is  such  as  excludes 
all  fear  in  the  sense  of  fright,  but  has  ever  been 
adorned  with  the  fear  which  means  reverence 
and  awe. 

Finally,  a  spiritual  life  is  one  wherein  is  this 


SUMMARY  OF  THE  CODE  147 

love  which  develops  the  image  of  God  in  one's 
self  and  one's  neighbors.  It  is  a  growing  life, 
a  continual  career,  a  passing  on  from  good  to 
better  and  toward  best.  The  love  it  secretes  is 
such  as  makes  a  man  good  for  something.  Its 
love  works  out  upon  home  and  community  to 
make  not  mere  smiling  but  efficiency  abound. 
Its  love  can  endure  all  things,  bear  all  things, 
believe  all  things,  and  hope  all  things.  But  it 
does  not  think  love's  work  is  done  when  it  en- 
dures and  bears  and  believes  and  hopes.  Love's 
work  is  done  when  the  people,  the  persons,  the 
souls  on  whom  it  is  spent,  are  saved,  are  made 
good,  are  made  resolute,  reliant,  useful,  capable, 
just.  It  is  not  the  man  who  has  been  ground 
to  powder  by  his  tribulations  who  is  a  spiritual 
man.  It  is  he  who  came  out  of  tribulations  but 
had  enough  spirit  to  get  his  robes  washed  in 
the  blood  of  the  Lamb.  He  wanted  to  be  good 
for  something  and  he  was  willing  to  keep  on 
trying  forever.  This  dogged  trying  to  be 
good  for  something;  to  develop  the  image;  to 
be,  and  to  help  others  be  better  thinkers,  bet- 
ter traders,  better  witnesses,  and  all  the  other 
good  things  our  nature  will  allow  us  to  be, — 
this  is  the  love  which  is  the  authentic  badge  of  a 
spiritual  man  or  woman. 

We  must  remind  ourselves  with  emphasis 
that  the  spiritual  life,  the  goal  of  evolution,  is 
none  other  than  life  as  it  was  lived  here  by 
Jesus  Christ    and    as  it    is  lived  by  God.     In 


148       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

both  cases  we  refer,  of  course,  not  to  the  form 
of  life,  not  to  the  peculiar  schedule  of  duties, — 
for  no  one  is  called  to  be  either  the  adminis- 
trator of  the  universe  or  the  savior  of  the  hu- 
man race, — ^but  to  the  principles  of  self-govern- 
ment as  they  were  employed  by  Christ  and  are 
employed  by  God.  And  we  are  quick  to  be- 
lieve that  the  key  to  these  two  pattern  spiritual 
lives  is  love.  Is  not  the  love  which  we  have  de- 
scribed the  love  of  Christ  and  the  love  of  God.? 
Christ's  love  covered  a  strength  which  carried 
him  through  daily  failure,  daily  disregard  on 
the  part  of  his  own  people,  through  the  antici- 
pations of  a  death  in  which  he  was  the  victim 
of  stupidity  as  well  as  of  sin.  There  is 
strength  surely.  Now  the  strength  of  God  is  ob- 
vious enough.  It  has  been  hard  to  persuade 
the  world  that  God  is  love.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  has  been,  it  is  still  hard  to  persuade  the  world 
that  Christ  is  strong.  But  strength  only, 
strength  administered  by  love,  love  adminis- 
tered with  power,  could  have  lived  the  daily 
sacrifice  of  Christ's  life.  It  is  the  part  of  a 
man  to  be  angry  at  the  wrong  of  the  world.  It 
is  the  part  of  a  strong  man  to  be  angry  and 
yet  not  to  sin;  to  love  unto  the  end,  to  waver 
never,  and  never  to  contemn.  God's  strength 
is  such  love.  Christ's  love  was  such  strength. 
And  it  is  such  love  that  can  spiritualize  our 
present  life  and  establish  our  resemblance  to 
Him  who  is  Eternal. 


ADDENDA 

A     COMPARATIVE     TABLE    OF 
THE    MORAL    LAW 

THE  IMAGE  OF  GOD 


ADDENDA 

The  parallel  columns  which  follow  exhibit  a 
comparison  between  that  teaching  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church  given  in  the  Catechism  contained 
in  The  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  the  fore- 
going interpretation.  The  Catechism  recites 
the  Ten  Commandments  as  they  stand  in  the 
Bible  at  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus,  and 
then  in  answer  to  the  question,  "What  dost  thou 
chiefly  learn  by  these  Commandments,"  says 
"I  learn  two  things ;  my  duty  towards  God,  and 
my  duty  towards  my  neighbor."  The  next  two 
statements  in  the  Catechism  serve  in  effect  as  a 
version  of  the  Law  as  interpreted  by  the 
Church.  They  are  printed  below  with  no  other 
changes  than  a  few  alterations  in  the  order  in 
which  certain  sentences  occur.  It  is  hoped  that 
an  examination  of  these  comparative  columns 
will  show  that  the  contents  of  this  book  are  kin- 
dred to  the  Church's  instruction  and  have  a 
value  for  teachers  in  schools  and  in  homes 
where  the  moral  law  is  taught. 


151 


152       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 
MY  DUTY  TOWARDS  GOD  IS— 


Law  I.  To  believe  in  him,  To 
honour  his  Word:  And 
to  love  him  with  all  my 
mind. 


Law  n.  To  fear  him,  And  to 
love  him  with  all  my 
heart. 


Law  in.  To  honour  his  holy 
Name:  To  put  my 
whole  trust  in  him. 
And  to  love  him  with 
all  my  strength. 


Law  IV.  To  worship  him,  to 
call  upon  him:  to 
give  him  thanks : 
And  to  love  him  with 
all  my  soul,  and  to 
serve  him  truly  all 
the    days  of  my  life. 


To  think  correctly. 


To  admire   aright. 


To  create  aright. 


To  receive  (absorb) 
the  spirit  of  God. 


ADDENDA 


15S 


MY  DUTY  TOWARDS  MY  NEIGHBOUR  IS— 


Law  V.  To  love,  honour,  and 
succour  my  father  and 
mother :  To  honour 
and  obey  the  civil 
authority:  To  submit 
myself  to  all  my  gov- 
erners,  teachers,  spir- 
itual pastors  and  mas- 
ters: To  order  my- 
self lowly  and  rever- 
ently to  all  my  betters. 

Law  VI.  To  bear  no  malice  nor 
hatred  in  my  heart: 
To  hurt  nobody  by 
word   or  deed. 

Law  VII.  To  keep  my  body 
in  temperance,  sob- 
erness,   and    chastity. 

Law  VIII.     To  keep  my  hands 
from  picking  and  steal- 
ing:   To  be  true  and 
ust  in  all  my  dealings. 

Law  IX.  To  keep  my  tongue 
from  evil  speaking, 
lying,  and  slander- 
ing. 


To  honour  those  of 
whom  thou  art  a 
beneficiary. 


To  save   Ufe. 


To     sanctify     thy 
experiences. 


To  be  a  Proprietor 
in  the  Social 
State. 


T  o     report      the 
truth 


154       THE  CODE  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


Law  X.  Not  to  covet  nor 
desire  other  men's 
goods;  But  to  learn 
and  labour  truly  to 
get  mine  own  livings 
And  to  do  my  duty  in 
that  state  of  life  unto 
which  it  shall  please 
God  to  call  me, — to 
do  to  all  men  as  I 
would  they  should  do 
unto  me :  and  to  love 
my  Neighbour  as  my- 
self. 


To  exchange  the 
fruits  of  the 
spirit. 


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